


Pain in the Neck

by lixy



Series: Love Bites [1]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Abusive Dave's Bro | Beta Dirk Strider, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - No Sburb Session, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Complicated Relationships, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Eventual Smut, Flashbacks, Fluff, Hand Jobs, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Kidnapping, M/M, Minor Character Death, Minor Jade/Rose, Minor suicidal ideation, POV Alternating, POV Minor Character, Past Abuse, Past Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Past Character Death, Road Trips, Skippable Smut, Slow Burn, Smoking, Smut, Supernatural Elements, To Be Edited, Trans Character, Vaginal Fingering, Vaginal Sex, Vampires, Violence, Werewolf!Jade, Werewolves, Witches, comprehensive tags for the smut will be included before the chapter, mentions of abuse, trans!Dave, vampire hunter!john, vampire!Dave
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-07
Updated: 2020-08-23
Packaged: 2021-01-24 03:20:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 16
Words: 65,667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21331414
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lixy/pseuds/lixy
Summary: John’s world came to a brutal awakening when his father died. He’s been raised into a world he desperately wanted to be a part of, where he could see where his father went on those hunting trips. Struggling to make sense of the world, his unusual education, his purpose in life, he stumbles into the one person that may understand.Dave’s world was taken away from him when he was killed. He’s forced into a world he doesn’t want to be a part of as he’s turned into a vampire and trained only in how to kill and feed. Failing to integrate into this violent world, he collides with the one person who he wants to understand.Both men are pushed together for a road trip and a suicide mission that neither of them particularly wanted.tags last updated: 23 Aug 2020
Relationships: John Egbert/Dave Strider, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Series: Love Bites [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1553296
Comments: 71
Kudos: 91





	1. Prologue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A fic adapted from some shit me and @LunarExo got up to a few years ago. Enjoy

Everything feels colder as John turns the key in his hand, locking the door to his childhood home. He’d barely touched anything inside, as if disturbing the furniture would change everything irrevocably forever, or ruin the memories of his boyhood. He’d tip-toed through the space with the impact of a ghost, barely daring to breathe. Even now, outside the house, his chest feels tight and desperate. With shaking hands, he pulls the key from the lock one last time, taking a determined step backwards. He shouldn’t linger. There was nothing for him here anymore. As if echoing his thoughts, the engine of his— _his_ truck coughed behind him, still running from when he’d idled in the drive. In all honesty, he hadn’t been planning to come back at all, but there was only so long he could avoid the bank, the lawyers, the people vying for his attention, his intention, wondering what was going to happen to the big, white suburban home. As soon as it was all dealt with, he’d go back to Seattle and bury the key again, inside a box of important papers or in with the bills. Another step back that he instinctually knows leaves him inches from the porch steps. Then, he’s gone, back in his truck and pulling away. This time, he hopes, will be the last time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks @LunarExo for existing <3


	2. Five Months Later

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John finds his prey once more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the first proper chapter. please enjoy!!
> 
> minor edit: 13 Aug 2020 — fixed some typos and added some lines for clarity

_Five months later._

The moon was heavy and bright in the sky, light dripping through the leaves and splashing the ground with dappled sliver, leading John further into the woods. His footfalls seem unbearably loud in the hush of night, great towering trees protecting him from the elements and making the shadows around him shift curiously in the dark.

He was hurt. He was angry. But really, most of all, he was just tired. All this time of following his Dad’s legacy — but for what? All he’d managed to do was chase some vampire kid halfway across the Pacific Northwest and get a chunk bitten out of him whenever he lost their dumb wrestling matches. Which, for the record, was every time they had a dumb wrestling match.

Now, though, he was chasing a lead. It was admittedly a vague lead at best, but there were reports of another person hospitalised with mysterious bites. Not dead, they were never dead— although John didn’t know why —but dizzy and scared and unable to describe much more than a young, handsome face that only looked a little ashen, and then a sharp pain and a fuzzy feeling. By now, that face was becoming predictable and easy to track, which might have been worrying if John had given a single Goddamn shit.

He broke through the brush and into a clearing where the moss gave way to long grass, swishing gently in the slight breeze that made its way through the dense branches. He stepped out into the moonlight and sucked in a breath, the pine-y smell of the forest surrounding him. He moved to continue onwards, but froze when he heard a scrape, a crunch, a sound of movement to his left, and his arm swung in its direction, breath caught in his chest.

The light cut across the grass to the edge of the clearing, catching someone— something —rising up out of the brush.  
The man in front of him was a face he’d become unfortunately acquainted with over the past few months— the young vampire kid from a powerful family down south. He’d been making his way from town to town, John constantly on his heels, and each time they met, it meant another stake gone and another town to leave.

The vampire winces at the light in his eyes, baring his teeth, John looking stoically on. “Careful with that,” he hisses, John narrowing his eyes at him. He keeps the light trained on his face, in part to keep an eye on him and in part because fuck taking orders from this asshole who looked the same Goddamn age as him. “Back again so soon?”

This guy makes him bristle just from the way he talks, smiling like he knows something John doesn’t, acting like he was all sorts of superior. Which was aggravating, obviously, but it was also weird to John— he didn’t seem to have a clan or den to fall back onto at all. Sure, he knew he was part of the infamous Strider clan, and he sure acted like it, but for them to have been doing this song and dance for so many months? He was surprised he never brought a pal to the party.

Not that he minded. He wouldn’t be able to handle two of them at once, and he only had so much repellent — most of it helpfully rubbed onto his neck in the hopes of either distracting the vampire or making him so sick afterwards he’d be an easy target. Maybe assuming he was going to get bitten wasn’t the most cherry course of action, but there was a point to be made in recognizing that human strength only went so far against superhuman vampire strength.

The vampire continues, a smile John had easily come to hate spreading over his face as he rises to his full height. “You’ve barely recovered and you already want to get your ass kicked again? It’s almost as if you like being left for dead in the middle of forests,” he sneers, moving casually and leaning back against a tree.

John rolls his shoulders, pulling himself into an easy fighting stance, but the tension never quite leaves them. He can’t remember the last time they weren’t taut with anxiety. “You’ll fuck up eventually. You’re a vampire, not a god. I’ve got nothing to lose, right?” he says, flashing the stake in his hand, “but you do. Bring your worst, you blood-sucking waste of space.”

Infuriatingly, the vampire only laughs in response. “What’s your damage, dude? What family are you from? Some vampire kill your daddy or something?” he clicks his tongue, the vampire’s own stance widening, readying himself. John’s proud of himself for not flinching at the question. He’s proud he can keep a level head as his body follows the vampire, beginning to circle, John squinting angrily at him. “Whatever your problem is, it has nothing to do with me.” Those fangs are bared once more and he opens his arms wide, fingers curled towards his palms. “So stop trying to fucking kill me. I’m just living my unlife, asshole.”

With that, the vampire springs, jumping forward with his arms outstretched. The flashlight is easily knocked out of his hand and John redoubles his grip on the stake, swinging it wildly Strider, landing lightly in front of him. His combatant strifes, John swinging out his stake and aiming for the gangly limbs that trailed behind him. His strikes hit empty air and he barely has the time to stumble before there’s a hard impact at his side and he’s forced to steel himself as they hit the ground. Momentarily stunned and disadvantaged by the dark. He had no chance to stop the tackle, the ground forcing all the air out of his lungs in a whoosh. It doesn’t stop him from struggling, flailing his arms and trying to throw his weight around, unbalance his attacker.

His fighting is stopped at a knee digs into his already-aching chest, wrists easily captured and pinned to the ground. The vampire’s face is screwed up in disgust, no doubt John’s looking just as offended.

“Give up already!” he has the audacity to yell, practically spitting in John’s face. “I’m not going to kill you and you’re not going to kill me. You’re wasting your time,” he growls, pointed teeth on obvious display.

It isn’t good sign for him that seeing the teeth peeking out of that vampire’s mouth results in little more than quiet resignation. His legs still kick, trying to free himself, but he isn’t afraid — he knows what’s coming. “I’m going to kill you eventually!” John snaps back, wincing at the pressure on his chest, feeling the sharp bones of the vampire’s knee digging into his sternum. “I’m going to kill you, and the whole Strider clan, just like I’m supposed to.”

“Is that supposed to make me scared?” the vampire says back, incredulous. “I couldn’t give two shits if you killed every single one of them. In fact, I’d be fucking glad! They’re all shit-stains and ass-kissers and I want nothing to do with them or you and your moronic vendetta.” The vampire wrestles with John’s wrist, still clutching the stake, John desperately trying to pull it back, knowing what was coming, the vampire’s cold strength making it all but impossible to even get close.

“You’re a liar!” John manages while he struggles, yanking and twisting and kicking as best he could until his muscles ached and his lungs burned. It didn’t need saying, but John said it anyway. There wasn’t an honest vampire on the planet. Especially not one that, for all his evangelizing of pacifism, still happily sucked away at John’s blood. Fury boils in his stomach, filling him with a wave of energy, kicking and screaming and trying anything to keep himself from going down peacefully.

“When are you going to learn?” The vampire says with just a touch too much pity for John. His knee digs further into John’s delicate human chest, bones and tissue groaning in protest. He’d known it was coming from the moment he was pinned, but that didn’t make it feel any less awful when those sharp teeth punctured the soft skin of his wrist, sinking into his veins like he was nothing more than melting butter. He keeps kicking, struggling, knowing that it increases the risk that his injuries will be worse, the fury in his blood keeping him fighting despite that. For all his efforts, he manages to grab a fistful of that blond hair, gripping it and ripping at it before his vision starts to fuzz and he starts to shiver in exhaustion.

Satisfyingly, Strider flinches at that. “That was unnecessary,” he growls, pulling back, blood on his lips, rubbing at where John had grabbed him. John doesn’t respond, his struggling weaker. There was that pitying look John hated so much. “What the hell is your name, anyway?” John’s eyelids felt heavy, but he still meets the vampire’s gaze angrily as he leans loser, breath reeking of iron and stolen life. His bloody wrist is released and John makes one last effort, taking a wild strike at him in lieu of an answer. The swing is easily dodged, the vampire rocking back on his knees with a bland look on his face, wiping blood from his lips and chin with his shirt. “Persistent little shit,” he mutters, standing up and brushing mud and grass from the knees of his ratty jeans.

He’s dizzy enough that even when there isn’t a weight pressing down on him, there’s not much movement John can manage. He hates this helpless feeling more than anything else.

John’s eyes finally close, head spinning and stomach flipping from the efforts of his fight, the blood loss, the exhaustion of it all. He can feel the vampire’s hands, cold even through the fabric of his clothes, digging through his pockets. They grow lighter as his stakes and potions and whatever else in there were flung, the distant rattling sounds of them getting lost in the dark pounding in his ears. He doesn’t have the energy to fight back, fist shaking as he tries to keep hold of his last stake, the hours of work whittling easily pried from his fingers and thrown away. He struggles to retain consciousness, swatting weakly at the vampire, trying to fight off the invasion of privacy.

There’s a moment when John thinks it’s finally over, only to have the vampire fire one last thing at him. “John, huh?” he says, John’s name bolting through him clearly like a strike of cold lightning. He feels sick with the realization that he’s known.“Well, Egbert, it was nice seeing you again, but I really gotta scram.” The vampire’s voice sounds far away, like he was drifting, down, down, into a hole, the vampire standing over him, watching him descend. The voice continues, muffled, but John’s last fingers of consciousness slip away, and he doesn’t hear anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Major thanks to @LunarExo, as always (●´ω｀●)


	3. Holy Water

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dave isn’t so good at negotiations.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was going to wait a week to publish this but I’m too pumped so here y’all go

The motel isn’t too difficult for Dave to track down. After spotting the hotel keycard in his now-named pursuer’s wallet, Dave had come up with a plan that might finally put an end to this. All Dave had to do was turn up at the local 24-hour internet cafe and search the name of the chain he’d seen printed on the keycard in John’s wallet, combined with the Seattle area and he had a pretty good idea of where to go. It looked like one of those standard chains that you could find in most places. Basic rooms, mediocre service, probably a dirty pool out back filled with leaves and unused this time of year. If his plan works, he might even be able to have a hot shower and a bed for once. Hope bubbles in his stomach despite his reservations, and he clicks around for the closest location, eagerly clicking through pictures of the room and grounds. He scribbles down the address and ducks out of the place, hood up over his face and sunglasses firmly affixed.

The sun is just rising as he leaves, winter-y sun lighting up the breath in front of pedestrians’ faces, hot air pouring from car exhausts, the yawns of shop keepers as they set out signs and flags. Dave zips his hoodie up to his chin and keeps his head low, his own breath coming out as no more than a wisp. After such a good meal, he feels bright and full of energy, like he could run a thousand laps around the city and back. With fresh blood in his system, he looked just a touch more human, a smidge less sickly, giving him just enough confidence to hang out in a library, at a park, lingering and waiting for night to fall. It gives him plenty of time to mull over and perfect his plan.

Last night had been the first time in months that Dave had gotten a glimpse into John’s deeper intentions. In the heat of the moment, the hunter had mentioned taking down the Strider clan, sparking a chain reaction of thoughts in Dave as they’d fought. The Striders was a highly specific family to want to take down, and a very powerful one at that. Almost impossible for someone like John; working alone, not even able to take down a vampire that was less than five years old. Even so, if this nobody somehow _could_ take them down, it would be nothing but good news for Dave. Having the Striders off his back would be an unbelievable weight off his shoulders — and even if John died trying, well, that was no skin off his teeth. Everything was starting to look brighter. If Dave could lead John to the den, he’d at the very least die and Dave would be free, but preferably, he’d win and be grateful enough for Dave’s assistance to leave him alone from there on.

The sky slowly darkens and Dave’s excitement builds until he can hardly keep still. The sun kissed the top of the skyline and Dave heads out, sticking to back alleys and empty streets. People had already begun to withdraw into the safety of their homes, giving Dave a little more room to wander. There weren’t many people out, but he didn’t want to be spotted nonetheless. If John had found him, that meant he’d stayed too long, that he’d been seen too many times already. His stomach growls, but he doesn’t stop to find something to eat, too nervously pumped up to consider prowling around for a snack — even if he would appreciate the boost of energy.

It isn’t far from the motel, Dave’s wandering during the day circling him closer and closer to the address he had constantly fidgeted with. He slinks around the back of the building. It was a squat structure made of white-washed brick and plaster, bent in a crooked L-shape with a parking lot in the middle. The sounds of human life thrum around him as he gets his bearings. Sitting outside one of the rooms is a familiar truck. Blue and bulky but remarkably clean, he would recognize that vehicle from a mile away. It’s parked in a spot between two doors— four and five —and Dave slips to the rear of the building, squished between the wall and a fence. He counts the windows, only to realise he needn’t have bothered.

Once he reaches the window he needs, various pungent smells waft over him. Garlic, holy water, the tang of silver and iron mixed with a fresh earth-y pine smell and mud. He had no doubt that this was John’s room. He runs his fingers along the sill, feeling for the slightest hitch or notch in the frame, using it for purchase. He digs his fingers in and wiggles it upwards, the lock rattling loosely and uselessly as he squeezes his hand into the gap he’d formed and unhooks it. He didn’t need to be a vampire to know how shitty the security was.

Carefully, quietly, he jimmies the window open wider, standing on his toes to peer into the room. The smell is stronger, fresher, but there’s no sign of John and he wonders if he was still bleeding out in the forest. A pang of confused guilt wracks him as he hoists himself up, climbing silently into the room and dropping softly onto the carpet.

As soon as he lands in the room, he knows he’s made a mistake. The smells in the room mix and suddenly Dave can pick out the sharper scent of sweat and blood, hear the pound of a heart beating and the rattle of breath through the wall. No sooner than he puts this together, John takes a step out of the bathroom, brandishing a knife steadily in Dave’s direction.

Instinctually, Dave takes a half-step back, spreading his palms out. “Believe it or not, I come in peace,” he says calmly, not placing great hope in John suddenly coming to trust him. Immediately, John seems agitated, shifting and squinting and obviously doubting him. “Easy. I just want to talk,” he says, like he’s trying to calm an animal. Dave eyes the nasty-looking weapon warily. While he really was just there to talk, he wasn’t too keen on getting stabbed, tonight or any night, so he subtly shifts himself into a solid stance, ready to fight the hunter off if needed. “There’s no need for that,” he says, jerking his chin at the knife. “I have some information that might be useful for a guy like you, yeah?” He takes a cautious step forward, arms still out in surrender. “You want to know where the Striders are, right? You wouldn’t be chasing me around if you knew where they were,” he says, eyes trained on the glinting metal. It was a shot in the dark, but he hoped the promise of information would stop John from killing him on the spot. Hoped.

John minutely relaxes, and Dave risks another step forwards. Surely John wasn’t so myopic in his hate for vampires that he couldn’t see Dave was genuine? What was the point in coming here to order to earn his trust, only to kill him? He’d had plenty of opportunities to bleed John dry, not to mention he could’ve burst through the front door and tossed him into a wall if he’d wanted to. Surely he wasn’t—

Suddenly, there’s a sharp movement to the right and Dave snaps his head to John’s left hand, the hand he hadn’t been watching, seeing a gleam coming for him. His mind goes to gun and he takes a panicked step backwards, knowing it was too late. But it wasn’t a gun.

Before he can utter another word, something cold and stinging is sprayed into his face and he swears, stumbling backwards, shoulder blades hitting the wall. “What the _fuck_, man?” he spits, though it comes out strained.

“Hah! I knew you were a little bitch!” John screams, and suddenly the room is spinning.

Rapidly, before Dave can question anything or fight back, slow stiffness races through his body from whatever John had thrown in his eyes. He starts to feel hot, like his bones was locking up and his throat was swelling. He falls on his knees and feels the bursts of pain as they creak under the pressure. He flops onto his side, the hotness growing into burning, spreading and pooling in his ribs. He fights to cover his chest, panicked and confused and afraid. What the fuck was this? This wasn’t how he’d reacted to anything John had used before. It wasn’t like the holy water he’d splashed on him, but his eyes were burning and his throat was closing up like it had then.

John is laughing, still yelling something, but the pain building behind his eyes and pounding in his ears make him sound like he’s speaking through cotton. Dave squeezes his eyes shut and tries to block out the noise. He can’t hear John anymore, but he doesn’t know if that’s because he’s been left to die or the pain was blocking out any sounds that weren’t his struggling lungs.

Helpless on the floor, Dave’s cheek digs into the scratchy motel room carpet and he finds that he can’t move enough to lift away from it. It’s more than being locked in pain, he’s seizing up, and the restriction only inflates his panic. The pain wouldn’t let up, and it seemed like if he was human it would have killed him already.

Arms lock around his torso and he’s lifted, each movement sending a fresh wave of pain and fire through his body. Though he tries, he can’t force down the pathetic cut-off noises he could feel himself making, strangled like they would be screams if he still could. He’s dragged up and laid on something soft, then he’s being twisted and pulled and manhandled as pain wracks through him, over and over, each wave worse than the last. He’d never wished more that he could pass out. He doesn’t try and fight it, barely noticing what was being done to him.

Far away, he hears John talking again, and he has no idea what’s being said or how long has passed. There’s a sound of a door slamming that reverberates in Dave’s skull, making his ears ring, and he knows he’s alone. Maybe he had been left to die after all. He takes the opportunity to sob a few times, his throat still tight and his entire body still stiff, but inch by inch, coming unstuck. It’s only when he doesn’t feel like he’s burning from the inside out that he forces his eyes open, only to shut them again at the blinding burning light of the orange motel room lights. He can feel his eyes painfully constrict to slits, lava shooting deep into his skull. When he tries again, he opens them slowly, bit by bit letting his eyes widen and widen until he can take in the blurry scenery that was John’s motel room. His sunglasses are nowhere to be seen, presumably on the floor or broken somewhere, and the room looks as though there’d been a fight. He doesn’t remember flailing around quite so much, but when he digs through his memory, he can’t for sure say it wasn’t him who caused it.

Trying to gather himself, he takes long breaths, as deep as he can make them through his tight throat, rubbing his face into the covers to try and wipe away some of his sweat. He hadn’t even known he could sweat. Wanting to shake some of the stiffness from his limbs, he tries to move. The first thing he notices is the pain that comes shooting back, duller but still feeling like being doused with boiling water. The second thing he notices is the fruitless-ness of even trying. He’s tied. Around his torso and middle, pinning his arms to his sides, around his knees and ankles, held securely together. They’re so tight, he knows they’d be painful if he wasn’t already in pain.

He knows he can’t go anywhere, but he won’t lie there and wait for John to come back with something deadlier for him to chew on, so he tries his best, gasping and sobbing and wriggling until he’s partially upright. Head against the wall at a painful angle, he must make a pitiful sight, but he won’t let John take all the hands. He was going to win a round or two, no matter the painful cost.

When the door opens again, the pain isn’t so debilitating that he can’t raise his head and fix John with an icy stare, tensed for whatever came next. In the doorway, John stops, and Dave gains a granule of pride at how unsure he looked. He creeps forward, standing at the end of the bed. “The rope is imbued with paralysis,” he says, his mouth working like he was chewing the inside of his cheek. “In case you were wondering why you can’t get out of it.”

As if in defiance, Dave flexes against the bonds, feeling them grow hot with magic, searing his skin. He grits his teeth and refuses to make a sound, still staring John down. “Fuck you,” he says, though it’s more of a slur, each word painful and deliberate. John only gives him an unimpressed look. He isn’t exactly impressed with Dave’s little show of defiance, simply sitting down on the end of the bed, looking almost tired. Dave grits his teeth and tries to hold his head up, not wanting to look as pathetic as he feels. “Just hurry up and kill me,” he croaks, pushing each word through his abused throat with great effort. He wants to ask why he was doing this to him, why he didn’t just kill him as soon as he was down, but he just didn’t have the strength to get the words out. Even the effort of keeping himself upright made his vision swim and his head droop, simply unable to keep looking at John.

John’s eyebrows furrow together and Dave can feel his eyes on him, no doubt taking pride in watching Dave wilt. In the end, he wasn’t strong enough to keep going. His pain won out over to his pride and he slouches to the side, unable to stop himself from falling with his hands. “If I was going to kill you, I wouldn’t have bothered tying you up, asshole,” John says, though his voice was uncharacteristically soft. “But we are on the same page, somehow. I knew you’d seen the keycard, and I wanted information. I mean, you don’t expect me to believe you were just going to give it to me with no incentive, right?” He laughs, just a small little sound. “I’m not that stupid, you’ve just been underestimating me.”

“My incentive was getting you out of my fucking ass,” he says, clenching and unclenching his fists, trying to keep himself moving. His fingers still felt painfully stiff, his neck completely frozen and locked up, but he keeps himself forcing out words. “And I never called you stupid.” Bullheaded? Maybe. But not stupid. The guy had to be somewhat intelligent in order to track Dave to the ends of the Earth.

John doesn’t bother replying, watching Dave struggle with thinly veiled interest. Dave couldn’t exactly keep up the conversation either. Between his anger and the pain, speaking wasn’t high on his list of things to do. His throat felt like sandpaper, his tongue too big for his mouth. Silently, he fumes. He’d come here in good faith, but now he was starting to think that he should’ve killed John when he had the chance.

Dave jumps as he feels a hand on his ankle, weakly trying to pull it away. John ignored him and patted him, and it was almost soothing if his voice wasn’t so condescending. “Does it really hurt that badly for you? And here I thought you were supposed to have a high pain tolerance.” Dave can’t find it in him to say anything back, closing his eyes and trying to will the pain to lessen some more.“It’ll wear off... eventually.” There’s a pause, as if John seriously expects him to reply. Then, John stands. “Well, I’m going to go through your pockets now. It’s only fair since you felt me up like some shitty TSA officer. Asshole.” John sounds more chipper than he’s ever sounded before, seemingly just for Dave’s pain.

John stands and starts running his hands over his jeans, his hoodie, the vampire lying there lumpy. He didn’t have anything to lose, and he barely remembers what was in his pockets in the first place.

What turns out is a handful of doings, a stick of gum, an expired condom, a key to something he doesn’t remember and a crumpled up three-month-old bus ticket.

“God, you pockets are awful,” John complains. He wants to badly to make a witty quip, but not a sound comes out. So he lays there, looking miserable, eyes closed and body limp. Even behind his lids, his vision swims with dancing colors and the world around him feels as it it were falling out beneath him.

Eventually, John seems to understand that Dave wasn’t going to be up for talking anytime soon. He sighs, and Dave feels him stand, moving somewhere else in the room. However long passes, Dave refuses to speak or move, like playing dead might convince John to let him go. It doesn’t, and all that happens is John moving about in silence for hours, until finally the bed shifts and he lies down next to Dave. He’s as far from the vampire as possible, but Dave doesn’t care. He wouldn’t be able to attack him even if they were touching. Between the pain and the binds, Dave isn’t doing anything.

*

The next morning, orange light washes through the room, causing John to finally stir. He shuffles and snuffles on the bed behind him, seemingly coming to finally. After hours and hours of lying on the bed, Dave is almost glad to hear his signs of life. It had been a long time since he’d had to stay in one place when he didn’t want to, seeing as he was constantly moving, drifting, not even owning a car.

When he tries, Dave finds he can move his head again, though it aches like a bitch when he does. All he can see over his shoulder is the vague form of John, sprawled out on the bed next to him. He’s practically falling off the mattress in his attempts to be as far from Dave as humanly possible. Still, he doesn’t quite wake, and Dave is left to wait some more. He wriggles around, testing the strength of his bonds. They sizzle and sting when he pushes too much at them, a shimmering air of magic or a curse surrounding them. Whatever it is, it’s too strong for him to even begin to break them.

“Good morning. I guess the potion wore off eventually, huh?” John says, Dave cringing away from his voice despite himself. He feels more helpless than usual, not even able to turn himself to look at the hunter, completely at his mercy. “Anyway, we should talk. You said you have information, and I want information.” John gets up, jostling Dave, and walks around the bed, dragging a chair behind him. He sits down and leans forwards on his knees, cracking his knuckles and shaking his hands out, waking himself up.

“Firstly, what’s your name? If you don’t give me one, I’m just going to call you Strider, and that may attract some... Unwanted attention. Your family isn’t very popular. I mean, you seem to know that.”

Dave lets out a sigh, refusing to meet John’s eye. Hearing himself referred to as Strider only makes a cold sickness roil in his stomach, so he yields easily. “All you had to do was ask, dude,” he says, trying on a smirk despite his aches and pains. John only looks at him with another of those unamused expressions. Eventually, he sighs, and shrugs. “It’s Dave.” He twists his lips, a scowl pinching his eyebrows. “You seem to think I chose this clan. I want less to do with them than you do.”

John doesn’t seem to care, bending down and picking up a half-whittled stake while Dave talks, shifting in apprehension. “I still don’t believe your plan wasn’t to kill me,” he says, ignoring Dave. “But I’ll believe that you have info. Tell me where the clan is, and I don’t kill you.” John tosses the stake from hand to hand, like it wasn’t a life-threatening chunk of wood.

“So you’re serious about this then?” Dave says with a drawl of disbelief. “You really want to walk into the den of some of the most powerful and bloodthirsty vampires in the country, by yourself, with some garlic water and pointy wood?” He can’t help but laugh sharply.

John squints at him, pointing the stake in his direction. “What the fuck else am I supposed to do? It’s not like anyone else is dealing with it.”

“‘What the fuck else are you supposed to do?’ I thought you said you weren’t stupid.” John’s face pinches further into anger and Dave pulls away, breathing out sharply. “Hell, I’m not going to stop you. If you want to go and get yourself killed, be my guest. I hope you rot in hell,” he says, flashing an angry smile. All fang, no charm. “They’re in bum-fuck Texas. Out in the cave system.”

“More specific, asshole,” John says, standing.

“What do I look like, an atlas? I don’t fucking know! You walk around, find the scent, and follow it. Bing bang boom, you’re in Strider City. I don’t fucking know, okay?”

John seems like he’s going to hit him for a moment, then his shoulders relax. He breathes out sharply through his nose, tiredly shrugging. “Fine. I guess I’ll take you with me. It’s not like you have much of a choice. Either you give me directions, or I kill you and go to Texas and get information on my own.”

Dave looks dumb-struck. “Seriously?” he says, arching one eyebrow. “I think you missed the part where I said _scent_. There isn’t going to be any information, shitlord. There’s no road you can take to get there, you have to walk through the wilderness with someone who can smell vampires, like, vampires,” he says, feeling almost smug. Maybe he’d wiggle his way out of this one yet.

At first, John doesn’t seem to react. Only his flaring nostrils give away the anger Dave is sure is bubbling under the surface. “You act like you’re the first Strider vampire to get caught,” he says slowly, casually strolling just out of Dave’s line of sight. “How many vampires does your shitty coven dad make a year? A few hundred? They die, sometimes they get captured,” he rounds back into Dave’s vision, this time holding a heavy tool in one hand, resting easily in the palm of the other. “And sometimes they spill the beans. You aren’t special, Dave.”

Dave keeps himself together, somehow, meeting John’s gaze. “So what makes you think you are? Able to find them and actually get to anyone that matters? Because you’re not, and you won’t. At least I know I’m not special. You need a reality check.”

The heavy metal tool is passed from palm to palm, and the sunlight flowing in catches it, sending a reflection dancing over Dave’s face. He can’t help but look at it then, and he tries not to let his apprehension show. It’s a heavy wrench, clean and silver, definitely enough to do some damage if John wanted to.

“Hey,” John says, noticing Dave looking. “Know what this is for?” he asks casually, taking a step forward.

“Twisting your nuts?” he says mockingly, forcing himself to look in John’s eyes, defiant. “Polishing the brass? I don’t know John, I have a feeling you’re going to tell me anyway.”

“It’s a vice wrench,” he replies, holding it up. His hands demonstrate the vice tightening, and a grin spreads across his face. “You know how vices are. Hold something in place so you can tug it out,” he continues, pulling ever closer. Dave suddenly realises what’s happening and he tries to wriggle back. “I’ve never heard about what happens to a vampire with no fangs, but maybe we can figure it out together!”

Next thing Dave knows, he’s being hit over the head with a sound that rings through his ears, his mouth forced open by hard metal, the teeth of the wrench closed around a fang. Instinctively, he jerks his head back, only for John to tug on his fang and make him hiss in pain. “You’d probably be special without your teeth. Oh man, how cool would I look if I was a vampire hunter with a necklace made of teeth? Fuck, that’d be great, don’t you think?” Dave’s lips pull back in boiling anger, locking eyes with John. His little speech makes Dave’s stomach turn with disgust. Without his teeth, he’d starve until they grew back. Which would be just as painful as it was the first time.

He manages a few words around the metal. “You wouldn’t dare.” They sound slurred and muffled, obscured by lingering pain and the tool. John’s words had made Dave’s stomach turn to ice, and he feels almost sick with it. The thought of the pain, the absolute agony of having his fangs ripped from his jaw. The pain of growing them back. The months of starving and torture.

He pales more than he already is, barely restraining his growing fear. John finally looks like the reputation hunters have. Ruthless and cruel.

Dave can’t tell if John is serious or not, and honestly, he doesn’t want to find out. The metal of the vice dug into his lip and he winces, trying to keep still. “You’re not that cruel,” he says when John doesn’t reply. The more he watches the hunter, the less convinced he was that he felt any sympathy towards vampires. “That’s worse than death,” Dave says, starting to panic. “You’re not that cruel,” he repeats, but it sounds more like a plea. Please don’t be that cruel.

John doesn’t even flinch. “I won’t do it if you agree to come with me. Do we have a deal, Dave? Or am I going to leave you for dead somewhere, tied up with no teeth?”

Immediately, Dave has no choice but to give in. “Fine,” he says bitterly, yanking his head away as soon as the vice is loosened. “Fucking _fine_. Good to know you’re just as shitty as the rest of those fucking hunters.”

“If you thought that, you wouldn’t have acted the way you did,” John says, seemingly unfazed as he wipes off the drool from the wrench on Dave’s pants. He drops it back in the toolbox and packs it up, preparing to leave.

Dave is hauled around like he’s no more than a sack of flour, shoved into the back seat of John’s truck. He’s a little surprised that John can carry him so easily, what with how easily Dave’s beaten his ass every time they’ve met, but he guesses he does look strong for a human. He’s bundled up in blankets to hide the ropes and he squirms around, trying to make himself comfortable. It was about to be the longest and angriest drive of his life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many grateful thanks to Sam, as always


	4. Twizzlers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John has a conscious— sort of.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i know i posted early this week but....have more

_Well_, John thinks. _While_ _Dave_ _looks like an angry child, at least he’s a warm one_. A warm one that John can see bouncing around in the back, jostled by every sharp turn or pothole on the road. He feels a little bad about it, but he has no way of telling apart Dave’s normal scowl from his uncomfortable one, so he has no reason to think that he was.

The sounds of him thumping around back there is deafening though, and John isn’t particularly happy listening to the sounds his own mouth makes while he chews, so he turns on the music. Specifically, the old CD his Dad had burned for him years ago as a gift, full of every cliché road trip song known to man. Half of them he can’t stand usually, but when played like this, he loves them. And anything is better than the current sound of nothing.

The Proclaimers sing about how far they’d walk loudly over the stereo system as the CD header, and John turns it up even more, bobbing his head along to the music. The music swings wildly between rock ballads that last way too long and orchestral music that shakes the whole cab when the drums kick in. His Dad’s taste in music was eccentric, but familiar. John knew every beat and word of these awful songs, and their sounds belonged here.

Every so often, John glances in the rear view mirror. Mostly, Dave seemed to be staring blankly at whatever he could see of the landscape. Sometimes his eyes were closed, but just when the sun slanted in through the window. Come to think of it, he had been wearing sunglasses when John had... _acquired_ him. In any case, it was obvious he was never sleeping. A scowl was permanently stitched into his brow, and he never ceased to wiggle and squirm.

The landscape flashes by, and John sticks to back roads. Partly it was to avoid toll booths or being seen to much, but mostly John just needed the extra miles to gather his thoughts and formulate a plan. Driving was his thinking time. It’s when he did his best work, he found. He had a few contacts he should reach out to; old friends of his Dad’s, people he’s met in the business, people he knew through someone who knew someone. The closest one he could think of was in California, a ranger in Klamath National Forest. He kept an eye on the local werewolf population in the area and had his ear to the ground for the goings ons in the world. If he had anything that could be useful, it would be worth it to check in.

Then, of course, there was Salt Lake City. Just outside the city was a huge hunting hub. After Dave’s multiple stunts, John was running low supplies. White oak, mainly, but also bullet casings and silver bullets themselves. It wouldn’t be bad to pick up some more alchemical supplies too. That potion he’d made had worked much better than he’d thought.

That potion.

John shifts uncomfortably in his seat. He remembers the way his heart had seized at the sight of him, crumpled on the ground and in so much obvious pain. It was hard to look at something so close to human and not feel a little sick at the thought that you’d caused it so much pain. He shakes himself out. He’d done the right thing. It wasn’t as though Dave hadn’t caused him pain over and over again by using him as a snack machine every time they fought. He deserved it, after all.

They’re almost out of Washington before John considers pulling over. He needed gas, and food, and to piss. So, John parks at the next gas station, stretching out his atrophied limbs and cutting the engine. Behind him, he feels Dave stirring.

“Don’t try anything,” he warns, opening the cab and hopping out. There isn’t a reply, so John just moves around to the bed. He hadn’t wanted to risk someone seeing Dave tied up in the back, so he’d parked by the air hoses where no one else was and opted to use one of the jerrycans he kept on him and pour it in at the next rest stop. He stops at the door to find his wallet and glances back at Dave.

He looks kind of like shit. He seems exhausted, somehow, like he’d been running laps and not tied up in the backseat for the last few hours. After a moment’s thought, he sighs and waves his hand around in a vague gesture. “You want anything? I don’t know if you can eat human food, but this might be your only chance.” He bends down to pick up the can, not really expecting Dave to reply. He’s tied up and tossed uncomfortably in the back of a truck that John knows smells too strongly of rubber and metal and tropical air freshener no matter what he tries to do to fix it.

So, he’s genuinely surprised when a sulkily quiet voice mutters out, “Twizzlers?” before John can close the door.

John pauses, as if considering this. “Yeah, Twizzlers, alright. Got it.”

At the pump he fills the jerrycan to the brim and pays in cash. He tacks on an extra few bills worth of food, stocking up so he’d have something to eat that night and in the morning. Mostly, it’s coffee drinks, the only version of an energy drink he could find palatable, and taquitos, full of enough salt and cheese to keep him going through another few hours of driving. He puts a family sized bag of Twizzlers shamelessly on top of his pile, along with a pack of gum at the last minute.

After a bathroom break and some time to stretch his legs, the food is dumped on the passenger seat, and John drives them to the nearest empty rest stop to eat. He takes an armful of his loot and clamors out of the front seat and into the back. “Food?”

Dave looks at him dubiously, like he thinks he’s about to be poisoned, but finally, grumpily, huffs out a, “yeah.” He pulls his legs back a bit, John thankful to be given some room to sit down. Dave awkwardly holds himself like he doesn’t know what to do, and John doesn’t blame him.

“Just put your feet on my lap, dude, there’s no room to be a prude.”

Dave flashes his fangs in annoyance but puts his feet down anyway, John using his shins as a make-do table. He opens the bag of Twizzlers first, tilting it towards Dave questioningly. Immediately, Dave looks even more annoyed. “Oh, thanks, I’ll just grab one of these with my— Oh wait,” he says flatly, wiggling his hands under the blanket.

“You’re such a big baby,” John says, putting the bag on Dave’s chest and digging into his taquito.

“What am I meant to do?” Dave whines. John can only roll his eyes.

“I’m getting to it! Just let me eat my lunch first, geez,” John shoots back. Dave doesn’t look happy, but he doesn’t look like he wants to chew John’s head off either. Between bites, John wipes his fingers off on Dave’s legs and grabs a licorice strand, offering it up to him. Carefully avoiding Dave’s fangs he takes turns alternating between his own food and feeding Dave, filling himself up and hopefully making Dave a little less grumpy along the way.

“Where are we?” Dave finally pipes up, “and do you have literally any other music to play?”

John laughs sharply, shoving his garbage into a plastic bag and kicking it under the seat. “We’re not even out of Washington. We’ll be stopping at the border this afternoon, probably...” His lips twitch, and he shrugs helplessly. “I wouldn’t have played any music if you were just up to talking. It’s a road trip CD my Dad made me. The only other thing I’ve got is Bryan Adam’s Greatest Hits and a karaoke CD of 2005 pop singles.” The AUX cord had long since stopped working and he’d never bothered to get a new one — all his real music was trapped on his phone.

Dave makes a strange face, a mix between confusion and annoyance. “I would be up to talk if you hadn’t threatened to defang me and leave me for dead,” he says mildly, cocking his head. “Telling someone you’ll leave them to painfully regrow their teeth isn’t a great way to make friends, you know John.”

For a while, John just lets Dave’s words sink in. He knows it isn’t worth arguing that Dave had hurt him badly too, because he knows full well that Dave doesn’t care about if he’s hurt or not. He’s just acting up to garner pity, and John only shrugs at him. He doesn’t want friendship anyway, the music was fine. What he really wanted was more information on the Strider clan, and Dave didn’t exactly seem very loose lipped about it.

Dave clicks his tongue against his teeth at John’s non-reply, sour expression deepening. “Are you ever going to untie me, or are you just going to carry me around like dead weight all the time?” he asks, clearly exasperated.

“I’m not untying you until we’re at least in Texas,” John says, pulling out one of his coffee cans. “You said it yourself — I threatened to defang you and I’m not really eager to be killed in my own truck ‘cause I took pity on you. Don’t bother even arguing about whether or not I deserve it, I don’t care and I’m not going to risk it so you don’t need to waste your energy on asking.” He opens the can of coffee and downs half of it in one go, Adam’s apple bobbing as he drinks. It makes his stomach feel uncomfortably heavy to be bloated with liquid, but the placebo of knowing caffeine was in his system promptly makes him feel more alert. When he lowers the can and looks over at Dave, he catches him staring. Uncomfortable, John rubs his neck, trying to get rid of the pricking feeling of being watched.

“I can’t survive off Twizzlers,” Dave says suddenly. “And I doubt you’re going to let me find my own food either.” He looks at John, arching a brow. “I’m gong to need to drink soon, or I won’t be any use to you. I really will just be dead weight. I need blood.” He pulls his mouth into a grim smile, fangs pressing into his lips.

With a sharp laugh, John leans over, giving Dave’s cheek a pat. “I mean, I don’t have to feed you. I could wait and see how long it takes until you really need it. Especially since I’m still so sore from the last time you tried to eat me.” He watches Dave’s face contort into cold fury, jerking himself away from John’s touch.

It felt surprisingly good to be in control this way, and once he’s finished his canned energy, he opens the truck door and steps out. “I’m going to the bathroom and checking the map, and then we’re leaving,” he says, shutting the door behind him.

Back at the truck, John immediately notices that Dave is back to not talking to him again, and he lets out a sigh at the sight of him being so dramatic. “Look,” he says, regardless of whether Dave bothered to pay attention — he can’t be completely shut out, there isn’t anything else to do or hear in the truck. “Maybe you try and pretend it doesn’t matter or something, but you’ve been sucking my blood for months now, okay? And it’s weird and painful, and I don’t like— I don’t like you! I get you need to eat, but maybe you could have a little pity for how fucking uncomfortable it is when you just go for someone’s bodily autonomy like that! It’s— It’s sensitive, okay?”

He starts the car after that, feeling hot and uncomfortable. He didn’t like admitting weakness like that, but he wanted to make it clear that having his blood sucked had been a distinctly unenjoyable experience, and that he deserves being able to be a bit of an asshole about deciding when and how his blood would get sucked in the future.

After five minutes that feel more like five hours, he boots up the Bryan Adams CD. If Dave didn’t want to talk, then he’d play more music like he said he would. He hated the sound of his own blood rushing in his ears and would listen to just about anything to drown it out.

They drive in relative silence, the sun starting to dip lower and lower, rays shining in through the window and warming the cab. Surprisingly, Dave seems to relax the warmer it got, stretching out and turning his face towards the sun. He wondered if Dave vampires were cold-blooded like lizards, warming themselves in the sun. Soon, they leave Washington and it starts to feel like a real road trip. He’d wanted to get all the way to California before turning in, but that was starting to look unlikely. Somewhere around five PM the taquitos he’d eaten start to run out and his stomach begins to let out rumbles that John decides are somewhere between genuine hunger and an intense, aching boredom.

He’d managed to listen through the entire Bryan Adams CD, and if he had to hear one more song about the good old days and love and loss he decides he’s going to shit his pants and jump out of the moving car.

John resolves to aim for Cow Canyon, knowing a perfectly secluded rest area they could haul up in to keep Dave out of sight for the night. It’s not too far that he’ll be driving through the night, but it’s far enough in that they’ll easily make it to Klamath tomorrow with time to spare. Dave still hasn’t spoken since they stopped last and the silence is overbearing, even over the music. They pass by a small town and John slows, scouting for somewhere to get some supplies for the night. Food, mostly. He stops at a supermarket, and while the sky is growing dark, he still cautiously makes sure the blanket is covering Dave’s ropes completely. “Okay, stay here. Don’t kill anyone, I’ll be a little while... Do you need water? Do vampires drink water?”

John was starting to feel a little out of his depth in regards to vampire knowledge. How was it he could know everything there was to know about killing them, but even the basics of keeping them alive were beyond him?

“I’m good,” Dave says, surprisingly subdued. “Just hurry up, this seat is real uncomfortable.” Far from the vampire he usually saw, this Dave seemed drained, and almost a little out of it. Vampires didn’t sleep, that much John knew, but did they get tired? If they could that’s exactly what Dave seemed to be.

“Is it?” he says, though he knew it was. He could see Dave thumping around the back after all, but this was the first time he’d mentioned it. Feeling a pang of pity for how uncomfortable and exhausted Dave looked, John rummages around under the seat before he darts around the other side of the truck to tuck a pillow under Dave’s head. “There, now it’s nap time for you. Or, well, just daydream or something. You can imagine dancing blood bags or whatever.” All Dave has is something incoherently mumbled, so John figures he’ll survive.

He shops as fast as he can without looking like a lunatic, pushing around a cart to fill with every kind of discounted deli sandwich and barbecue chicken he can find, as well as more coffee, and, in a small fit of frustration with the existence of Bryan Adams, a new AUX cord.

The first thing he sees upon returning is Dave’s pitiful expression, the pillow John had so generously supplied laying in the footwell. He opens the door, and Dave pipes up as soon as he does, not letting John even finish putting his shopping away.

“It’s about time,” he complains loudly as John settles into his seat. “How long were you gone? Two hours? Three? At least three people looked like they were going to call the cops on me for being a weirdo pervert man in the back of a truck.”

“So, I take it you had fun, lying there, looking like a crab?”

“A crab? I was thinking more like a dying snake, or maybe a millipede. Why a crab?” he says, kicking his legs around as if to demonstrate his snake-y-ness.

“Because you’re crabby,” John says with an eye roll.

“Oh ha-ha. Can’t a tied up and kidnapped vampire be a little crabby. Can you pass me the pillow? I think my neck’s going to snap if I have to lean it against this God forsaken door one more time.”

John can’t help himself as a laugh bubbles out of him at the sight of Dave wiggling around to try and get his pillow. “Oh, jeez. How did you even manage that?” He takes enough pity on him to get out of the car and go to Dave’s side. This time when he tucked the pillow under his head he shoves a bit of the pillowcase into the corner of the seat, hopefully securing it in place. “Better?”

“Yeah, better.”

John doesn’t move for a long moment after that. His hands rested on either side of Dave’s head, fingers tapping against the pillow. “I was thinking...” he starts, Dave perking up and tipping his head back to look at him. In the harsh parking lot lighting he can see just how worn out and haggard Dave looks. He may refuse to admit it, but he wasn’t in good shape, and it had dawned on him in the shop why that was. “You’re, uh, thirsty, right? So when we get to the rest stop, I’ll give you something to eat— drink, whatever? You know, the real food for you— the... food you want. Just a bit. Before I sleep, since I still need to drive.”

Dave’s grin is startling in its eager sincerity. “You can say blood bro, it’s okay.” he laughs, tilting his head back further.

“Shut up, no I can not! Who knows how many people are listening right now?”

“Wow John, you’re so generous, not letting me starve to death in the night. Careful, you might actually be nice to me, and we wouldn’t want that to happen.” Dave’s teasing is weirdly light and cheerful for him, and John can understand why. If drinking blood functioned the same as food, then chances are, he’d gone over 24 hours without any at this point.

“I want you to ask nicely for it. I want to be impressed by your begging abilities,” he jokes, leaning on the pillow obnoxiously, hands dangerously close to Dave’s mouth, and he seems to notice it too.

“If you weren’t holding my stomach hostage, I could bite you, you know,” he points out, though he makes no move to follow through. Trust the snooty vampire John had come to know and hate to point out the opportunities he could’ve beaten John if they were in different circumstances.

John raises an eyebrow at him, and then he smiles broad and wide and just a little teasingly. “Yeah, but I’ve got you whipped, don’t I? You won’t.” The smile stays plastered on his face, even as he drives away, unwrapping a sandwich to continue his act of steadily fueling himself up in preparation for the night.

The drive is slightly more bearable after that. Dave is a little less cranky after that, snakily commenting on John’s music taste, pointing out phallically shaped clouds, and generally being less crabby in general. Even if he complains when John plays too much Chopin and complains even more when he switches to contemporary classics, it doesn’t feel mean anymore. He figures being hangry is a real thing, even for vampires.

They reach the rest spot not long after, and it’s still relatively early. In part because they’d left so early and in part because John is a master of speeding when the cops aren’t around. He really shouldn’t risk it at all with a random vampire in his trunk, but at this point he’s convinced Dave won’t risk going to the police when they could just play it off as some strange home remedy for car sickness.

Then, he feels nervous, parking the truck in a spot covered by tress and bush, only barely inside the designated rest stop area. He has enough food for the night, and he’s planning on just chilling out here — the stars that peek through the canopy of trees are bright and pretty — but suddenly he’s wary of what he has to do. He stops the car, turning to Dave with a, “hey?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> haha 4 out of 20  
i think this may end up being 21 chapters but i aimed low just in case
> 
> thank you sam, as always, for being basically half this project  
(seriously, she just didn’t want to co-author for the notifications, please check her out @LunarExo)


	5. Dinner Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dave gets a meal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> short-ish but sweet

The rest of the drive is slightly more tolerable. John has marginally better music on his phone, though it’s the variety that makes it palatable, rather than the actual music. Anything was better than hearing what was essentially the same two songs over and over again for hours on end. They’re making good time, from what Dave can tell, but he honestly isn’t an expert, and when your sight is limited to a slice of sky a few inches thick, there wasn’t much to go on. He hopes they make it to this rest stop soon, excitedly babbling and being overall much more agreeable than he had been the rest of the trip so far. It was probably the most he’d said to John for a long time that wasn’t a threat or an insult— at least since before he was kidnapped and whisked away on a road trip to the worst family gathering in history. He might not have been so eager to hurry up their journey if he wasn’t looking forward to a proper meal all night. He hadn’t eaten in what felt like days, and just imagining the hot spurt of life-sustaining blood was enough to fill him with vigour.

They finally pull in somewhere — where, Dave doesn’t particularly know or care —and he looks at John expectantly.

“Hey,” John says, almost awkwardly.

“Hey,” Dave parrots, tilting his head. “Is that a ‘hey’ like, ‘hey how are you?’ or like, ‘hey’ as in ‘are you ready kids?’ Because if you’re asking how I am, I’m uncomfortable as all hell, and if you’re asking me if I’m ready, I’m ready for basically anything that isn’t sitting right here for another 12 million hours, but especially ready to like, eat something?”

When John laughs, Dave can tell he’s still uncomfortable, but Dave can’t really blame him. From what he’s heard, being bitten by a vampire is highly unpleasant. On the other hand, he wouldn’t be in this mess if he’d just left well enough alone, so maybe John deserved it. John jumps out of the truck without actually answering, and Dave wonders if maybe he somehow pushed him too far. He can hear rattling and scuffling coming from the truck bed, throwing food and other crap back there.

He does end up coming back for Dave, though, opening the door and grabbing his ankles. “You’ve been trapped in this truck a pretty long time, right?” he says, though John doesn’t wait for an answer before he’s pulling Dave out. Dave wriggles around, trying to make it easier for him. He may not like being carried around like a rag doll, but he badly wanted out of that truck. John easily hefts Dave over his shoulder and walks around to the truck bed, semi-gently laying him down on an air mattress. Only then does it dawn on him where they were going to be sleeping.

“I mean, this is better,” he says slowly, shifting as best he can to get comfortable. “But let’s be honest. I’m still in this truck.”

John lies down next to him on the other side of the bed and Dave watches him curiously. “You sleep in your truck?” he says with a touch of disbelief. Around him were the signs that John indeed did sleep in his truck bed. A little battery-powered lamp, some kind of portable locker strapped to the bed, the air mattress and the bedding to go with it, and even some clothes strewn about.

“Well, yeah dude, this is where I live. I don’t exactly have a permanent address.”

“Was the motel a splurge or something?” Dave laughs, still trying to take in the absurdity of being chased across the country by a guy who slept in his car every night. Then again, he wasn’t one to talk. The closest thing he had to a home was whatever park bench he hangs out on in a town. Without needing to sleep, there isn’t really a need for a bed.

John visibly bristles the most Dave prods. “It’s a nice bed, okay! Look, it’s basically camping. The mattress is comfy and everything. It’s better than some motel, there’s no fleas!” he pulls off his shirt and replaces it with a looser one, chucking his laundry somewhere else on the floor. His face relaxes a little and he sighs, rubbing his eyes. “I mean, I get it, you wanted a bed.”

“Hey, I didn’t say it was bad, just that I was surprised. You’re the one who sleeps, but if it were me, I’d prefer a real bed. Don’t you?” Dave says.

“I told you, this is better. I don’t stay at a motel unless its less than fifty dollars a night and they have free wi-fi _and_ breakfast. Or if I think a vampire might kill me in the night if I’m in the open,” he glares pointedly at Dave at that.

“When have I ever threatened to kill you?” Dave jabs back, somehow enjoying having a conversation with John for once.

“Sucking my blood when I don’t know how much you’ll take is pretty much an implied threat, dude,” John shrugs, turning to look up at the sky.

Dave wonders how long John’s been living like this. While it made sense that someone like Dave wouldn’t exactly have a house to go home to, it seemed a little odd that someone like John wouldn’t. He obviously has some money, but he didn’t have a paying job — that much was clear from the fact that he didn’t have a house and yet he could afford to chase Dave around for months on end with no breaks. He supposed it made sense to save for an emergency, but couldn’t he at least afford a minivan? An RV? Dave doubted he’d be able to work it out from the little information he had, and he doesn’t want to press his luck by asking any more, so he decides to drop it.

“So, you’re hungry, right?” John says, breaking the silence. Dave is immediately distracted. He perks up, lifting his head so he can look at John.

“You can say that again,” he says eagerly with a grin full of fangs. John startles and looks over at him with a hesitant almost-smile. He was clearly nervous, but apparently Dave’s face was stupid enough that he was still somewhat amused. John seemed less apprehensive about getting in Dave’s personal space, which was fine by him. The quicker he realised Dave wasn’t exactly waiting for a chance to kill him, the sooner he’d loosen his bonds, if only a little.

“Okay,” John says a moment later, shoving Dave’s face away with a laugh. Just the word ‘okay’ gets Dave more excited than he has any right to be, only for it to be dampened a little by the following, “but...”

“But?” he prompts, a little annoyed.

“I want you to ask nicely,” he says firmly, nodding once. He’s flushed red, which only makes Dave more eager to go along with whatever in order to eat. It didn’t seem like such a bad condition on the surface, but if he’d learned anything about John over the last few months, just asking nicely wasn’t going to be enough. Even if he said his pleases and thank yous, Dave had a feeling that John would want begging. “And you only get my wrist, because... Well, I don’t.... I don’t want anyone near my neck unless I’m planning to date them, end of story.” It was almost a silly condition, specifically made in order to make sure Dave had the most difficulty drinking as possible. However, John’s embarrassment makes it seem less malicious and more genuine. Sure, Dave was disappointed he couldn’t use his neck— it was the best place to get blood, after all —but John seemed pretty adamant about this particular thing, so Dave doesn’t push.

John rolls onto his side, leaning a little over Dave expectantly. With a heavy sigh, Dave tips his head back and gives John a long look. “Please?” he tries, his face pulling into a frown. John’s face tells him that wouldn’t be enough, so he steels himself and tried again. “John, please, I’m hungry. Can I have a drink?” he forces himself not to sound resentful, sticking out his bottom lip and hoping that hides the frown that tugs at his mouth still.

Quickly, John clears his throat and leans away nodding quickly. He’s still pink, and Dave imagines how warm his skin must be. Squeezing his eyes shut, John thrusts his curled up hand towards him, and despite himself, Dave flinches. It was only an offering, however, fist clenched and wrist exposed for him to take. Dave glances up, but John wasn’t looking at him, eyes screwed shut.

As best as he can, Dave scoots closer, nose bumping against John’s wrist before his mouth does. His skin is warm and he can hear the tattoo of John’s blood pumping fast through his veins. Blood doesn’t smell, per se, but something about hearing and seeing and feeling it is just like smelling a freshly baked cake on a windowsill, or cracking open a new bottle of apple juice and hearing that hiss of air releasing. He licks his lips impatiently, but doesn’t bite yet. As much as he wanted to dig in, he doesn’t want to destroy the minimal amount of trust that had built between them. “How much?” he asks, knocking his tied legs against John’s, prompting him to open his eyes again.

He seems impatient too, but with a nervous air, like he just wanted to get it over with. “I’ll pinch you if you’re taking too much,” John promises.

“You know, if you untie me I can go and find—“

“No,” John interrupts. “It’s fine, it just feels weird.”

Dave twists his lips, but hunger wins out in the end. “Okay,” he says, tilting his head and aligning himself to John’s wrist. “Press against my mouth,” he says. When John looks at him dubiously, Dave huffs and pulls back. “Well, I can’t exactly hold it, and if I can’t get a good bite, I might have to bite twice,” he says, John quickly nodding again and pressing his wrist forward. Dave feels for a good spot, tasting John’s sweat and nerves, and he tries to be gentle and quick.  
He doesn’t bite nearly as hard as he usually would, barely enough to get to the blood at all, and he pulls his fangs out quickly, pressing the flats of them against his skin instead of leaving them in, hoping that was more comfortable. Every slide of his teeth makes John shudder beneath him, but he holds his arm steady. He wants to be considerate, but as blood wells under his tongue his starvation rushes up to meet him, John’s heartbeat in his mouth, and he drinks.

As satisfying as drinking blood is, sickness boils in Dave’s stomach as it often does. Ever since being turned, his own biology freaked him out as much as it freaked John out. The strange pointed-flatness of his fangs, the desaturated pallor of his body, the purple tint in his nail beds, the weird things his eyes do, or his saliva, or his ears. Most of all he hated how cold he always was. He guessed there was a good reason vampires ruled the south, and that was the sun. Washington had been safe from other vampires, but that was mostly because of how miserably cold it had been. He’d be slower, weaker, that exhaustion that wasn’t tiredness deep in his bones. John’s fingers clench and unclench and Dave pulls away, not wanting to get carried away.  
There was a moment of thought before he did something he didn’t usually bother to do. Carefully, so John would know he wasn’t going to bite him again, he licks once over the wound, watching the blood quickly slow and clot.

John looks a little dazed, shuddering a little but seemingly not too worse for wear. He grabs some food and a juice box, guzzling both as fast as he could cram them into his mouth. Dave worries for a second that he somehow took too much even when taking so little from him. John slows down and stop to glance over at him, Dave still licking the last of the blood from his lips and teeth.

“Do you feel better now?” He asks.

When Dave is sure he doesn’t have a bloody smile, he grins. “Much,” he says, rolling onto his back. “Was that too much?” He asks in return, tipping his head to examine John. He doesn’t look too pale, and he wasn’t shaking anymore, so he can assume it wasn’t too bad. “‘Cause, I mean, that was the very least I could manage,” he adds, shrugging as best he can.  
He really does feel much better after the snack. He feels a little warmer and stronger, a little more energetic.

“No, it’s fine, m’just dizzy. Have you ever given blood? You know, before?” The question isn’t completely off topic, but it still takes Dave aback a little. John had never seemed to acknowledge that that he was once human, let alone ask about it. He looks at him for a long while before he answers slowly.

“...No. No, I hadn’t.” He looks away, pressing his lips together.

The sky was clear and cloudless, far enough away from the city that the stars shone through. If he wasn’t tied up in the back of a dingy truck under the threat of death, it might have even been nice.

“I used to,” John says, rolling onto his back and looking up at the sky as well. Dave feels the heavy meaning behind that simple partial sentence. Did he stop because of Dave? He must look concerned, because when John glances over at him, he shrugs. “I’m not eligible anymore. Not unless I lied, I guess.” That made more sense. It was a little uncomfortable to face these sorts of truths about John— to face John’s humanity as much as John seemed reluctant to face his. It seemed weird to think they may have more in common than they thought.

“I’m sorry,” he says, visibly awkward. He hadn’t expected this strangely loaded topic to come up, but he guesses people say weird things when they’re light-headed and tired.

John doesn’t reply, finishing off his juice box, chucking it to the side. He feels around, looking for something and finds a container with some pastries inside. When he cracks the lid, all Dave can smell is sugar and apple. Human food may not fill him up anymore, but that didn’t mean that Dave couldn’t imagine the sweetness of sugar on his tongue. John pulls the pastry out of the container, and glances at Dave. His face seems to soften. “Want a bite? It’s an apple danish.”

Dave licks his lips, thinking about it quickly. He’s nodding before he’s finished thinking, though, and John rips a corner off the pastry. Dave leans in, snatching it up quickly. As embarrassing as it was being fed like a hopeless child, the danish smelt too good to refuse. He darts his tongue out to get the last crumbs, John yelping and wiping them on the blanket and shooting Dave a glare.

John goes silent as he eats, clearly thinking hard about something, though Dave can’t see his face clearly enough to try and figure out what. Instead of trying to figure out what went on inside the brain of John Egbert, he looks back up at the sky, trying to get comfortable on the air mattress. Every shift either of them makes wobbles the other person, though John seems either too lost in thought or unbothered to comment on it.

“Tastes kinda stale, sorry,” he says between bites, yawning widely.

“It’s fine,” Dave replies, licking his lips once more. “I’m well fed.” The guy looks absolutely knackered, and Dave couldn’t blame him. He’d been driving all day and fed a hungry vampire. He was surprised the guy was still coherent. “You look like you’re going to pass out, dude,” he says quietly, John turning to look at him with heavy eyes. “Go to bed. I don’t want to die in a fiery crash tomorrow because you were tired or some shit.”

John doesn’t take much convincing to get ready to sleep, the guy rolling over and conking out almost immediately. Dave laughs quietly, settling in for a long night of staring at the stars and hoping no one comes across them and accuses them of practicing bondage in public. John snuffles and tosses in his sleep, which isn’t an issue until a solid arm connects with Dave’s chest, almost making him jump out of his skin. The arm, belonging to John, grabs at his shirt and snores, Dave giving him a slightly horrified look.  
There wasn’t anywhere to go. Dave was already as far to the side as he could go without face-planting into the metal, and he can’t exactly stand up and go sit elsewhere. If there were any upsides, however, it was that John was surprisingly warm and soft against him. It wasn’t the most uncomfortable thing in the world, even when he was tied up.

Dave doesn’t bother to try and move away, instead staring up at the stars, listening to the calming breaths of John beside him. Sometimes he missed needing to sleep, but other times he didn’t. He wasn’t sure which one this was.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> donate blood!!  
also, thanks to sam (as always)


	6. Sun-Warmed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John is more considerate than he’d like to be. Jade is on the hunt.

The morning starts uncomfortable, but Dave seems unbothered by John’s contact, so he files the incident away and tries not to think about it. Something about last night had changed their dynamic ever so slightly, and John couldn’t put his finger on what. Maybe it was the fact that they may be more similar than different — at least, they were in their human lives — or maybe it was just that things seemed less scary now that John could (somewhat) trust Dave to be careful while feeding and Dave could (somewhat) trust John to feed him. Maybe it was just a result of being cooped up together, knowing their trip was going to be a long one. Either way, they set off on the road again with a bit of a budding sense of camaraderie between them.

The truck wheezes and clanks and sparks to life, and continues to sail them down the road and onwards towards California. It was warmer than it had been the previous days, and Dave seemed to enjoy that. After noticing the first time how much Dave liked the sun, John had gone out of his way to keep the cab just a little warmer, maybe even taking a short detour to a gas station for a pee he could have held, just to park the car in the sun and let him bask.

It seemed like the least he could do for him, what with how he was tied up. He still didn’t even consider untying him, however. He was still well aware of how sharp those teeth were, how strong he looked despite his appearance. If he’d been a regular human, John would’ve guessed he was somewhat fit, maybe even a former athlete, but no where near strong enough to overpower John by conventional means. John knew better than anyone what strength lay under the surface, though. He’d taken one too many tumbles in a parking lot or park at his hands to have any doubt that Dave could take him, even weakened.

The last time John had visited Klamath, and California in general, the sky had been hazy with smoke and the air had been dry and dusty, even before he’d entered the state. It didn’t seem like there was a wildfire in sight now, though, and the wind was just a little fresher than it had been those many months ago.

Though it was a cooler season, the heat didn’t let up. The cab began to feel stifling, and though Dave seemed to enjoy it, John couldn’t stand it. He missed the constant humid wetness of his home town, the lushness of the leaves and the softness of the forest carpet underfoot. Here, even the evergreens seemed dry and warm. More wood than leaf, the trees towered overhead with their slim greatness and provided little shade from the sun. It wasn’t the hottest it had ever been, but John slowly stopped parking in the sun, started rolling the windows down a little more. If Dave noticed he didn’t mind. It must have been refreshing, not smelling John’s sweat all the time.

They cross into California proper, and John pulls over. Dave is dozing like he often does, napping in the way a cat is. Always alert under his eyelids, even when he seems to be asleep. John still wasn’t sure if vampires could sleep at all, but from the way Dave would always respond with sharp quickness to the sound of his name or change in light told him they probably didn’t.

John pops the glovebox, rifling around inside. He knew what he was looking for, but under the dozens of other maps and brochures, it was hard to find. Finally, he pulls out a water-damaged copy of the Klamath National Forest Atlas. On a dog-eared page, he found his buddy’s ranger station circled in highlighter. A bit of this and that, and John figures out how to get there, following an old road and going up an incline, and finally following a hiking path. The last mile or so would have to be on foot. John bites his lip and starts the truck.

In the hours they spent together, little by little, John learns a little more about Dave, the person. He’s still weirdly clueless on Dave, the vampire, but small tidbits some out in conversation that put together a picture of who Dave was. He loves apple (which explained the danish, John feeling a little shocked he’d guess that right by accident,) and he used to take photographs. In return John allows Dave a few pieces of himself. He thinks donuts filled with jelly or cream are objectively superior, and when he was a kid, he wanted to work at the aquarium, helping take care of all the fish and others and other sea creatures. Dave wanted to go back to school.

The trees grew denser, the shadows more dappled, and John is forced to slow down, taking a meandering, winding path deeper into the forest. At a certain point, though, he’s forced to stop. There’s a barrier leading up a path, sealed with a padlock and manned by an empty security booth. There’s a single ranger vehicle parked on a tiny concrete pad, and John does his best to squeeze in beside it.

He gives Dave a long look. There was no way he was carrying him with him, but leaving him alone for an hour or so seemed stupid too. Weighing the pros and cons, he finally decides that maybe he trusts Dave just enough to hope he won’t try and flee the first moment he gets.

“Alright, I’m going up to meet a contact,” he says into the rear view mirror. Dave’s eyes flick open, somehow already seeming to be looking at him before his lids parted. It was unsettling enough that John’s gaze breaks first. “I can’t drive up there, so you’re going to have to stay here. I’ll be about an hour.” When he looks back, Dave’s eyes are closed again.

“Do whatever you want,” he says, almost bored.

“Don’t do anything stupid,” John warns, stuffing a can of coffee and some snacks into a bag to take with him.

“When have I ever?” Dave says, a faint smile playing over his features. In the golden light passing through the redwoods, he could almost pass as human.

After covering Dave up adequately, John ducks under the barrier, and begins to walk. It was a surprisingly nice walk. The path was actually a short connection between the road and the hiking trail, and the walk is gentle. He even passes a couple resting on a boulder and sharing some food. He makes polite small talk before moving on.

It was nice to stretch his legs and breathe in the fresh air, thick with sap and dry leaves, skittering over the packed-dirt trail. It’s under a mile when he turns from the main road and follows another path off into the trees. This path was made of wood, hammered or packed into the ground, creating stairs that led him past and over a creek and then up again, bringing the wooden structure of the fire watch tower into view. A light hangs in the window, a figure moving inside.

“Hey!” he calls, hand cupped around his mouth. “Anyone home?”

The information he gets isn’t super useful. It was nice to catch up with an old friend, but the conversation had quickly soured. No one had told him about Dad. John didn’t want old wounds opened by new sympathies, so he doesn’t tell him.

All he could get was that the local werewolves were getting skittish about something. Some of the packs were breaking off into smaller groups, which wasn’t unusual, but some of them weren’t coming back. Apparently, most of the Californian werewolves lived in surrounding towns and spent most of their days either in the forests or at various jobs that were often in the forests. Local legends say that the mother of werewolves was born in Klamath, so it was a popular destination to live and visit.

“Some of t’big guys haven’ come back recently, ‘n no one else is talking,” he sighs, and John frowns.

“Do you think that has anything to do with vampires?” he asks.

“Maybe? Usually it’s the human tourist season that drives ‘em off. Gets too crowded, they take seasonal work, that kinds a thing, but it’s off-peak. It could be just that there’s too many of ‘em. Of’n they split ‘n such when packs get too big. Kiddies run off and start their own pack, that kinds a thing, but it ain’t the kids going off this time.”

It was interesting, but John didn’t know if it had anything to do with the Striders, so he just thanks him for his time and makes the journey back. It’s faster paced, mostly downhill, so he makes it back with no effort. The barrier comes into sight, and John curses. Dashing forwards he scrambles under the barrier and towards the truck. One of the doors was wide open, and Dave’s blanket was splashed out on the ground, red and stark against the muted trees. Fearing the worst, he sprints for the truck— only to slow to a jog, then a puffing halt.

Dave was half-in half-out of the truck, sitting on the ground, trying to pull himself onto his knees to get into or out of the car. He’s frozen, obviously having heard John’s approach.

“I wanted some fresh air?” he says, and John sighs.

“Yeah right. We’re leaving,” he says, grabbing a fistful of Dave’s ropes and hauling him back into the truck. He enables the child locks and slams the door again. “I told you not to do anything stupid,” he says, more exasperated than angry. Dave, on the other hand, looks terrified. John pauses. He’s stiff as a board, eyes downcast and shoulders raised. His knees are bent like he’d curl around himself if he could. John’s heart stutters a little before plummeting into his stomach. “Dave?” he says cautiously.

Dave snaps to attention, casting nervous glances at John, letting them skitter away without settling.

“Dave, I’m...” he starts, not sure what he wants to say. “I’m not going to hurt you. I can’t... I can’t blame you for trying,” he admits. “Even if you did fail pretty hard.”

A bark-like laugh comes from Dave, rough and sharp. He looks terrified, but not exactly in the way he was when John had threatened him. This seemed different somehow. “What’s wrong?” he tries, and that seems to knock Dave out of whatever panic had settled in.

“What? Nothing, I’m fine. Are we going?” he asks, hurriedly.

“In a second,” John says, distracted, walking over to the brush.

“It smells like wet dog here,” Dave complains, crinkling his nose.

John returns with Dave’s blanket, tucking him back in with soft hands. He doesn’t know what has Dave jumpy, but the fact that John had triggered it made him desperately unhappy. He didn’t even know what specifically upset him, only that he was upset. “That would be the werewolves,” John mutters.

“Gross,” Dave says, wrinkling his nose. John can’t help but laugh. It seems that wasn’t urban legend. Vampires and werewolves weren’t enemies, in fact, there was far more inter-clan clashing with vampires than pack-clan clashes with werewolves and vampires, but, they weren’t the best of friends either, according to the word on the street. John pats Dave’s leg, hopefully comfortingly, then swings back into the driver’s seat. Without another word, John pulls out, and they splutter away from Klamath and on with their journey.

º

Jade’s great white muzzle lifts into the air. Around her, the pack circles, gathers, watches. Their ears flick and muscles tense. There were six of them, including her, crouched along the road, hidden in the bushes. All but one were in their natural skins, dappled browns and greys blending in with the forest floor on a drizzly day. The one of them on two legs is speaking, talking to a human with a big, bushy moustache and heavy eyebrows that make him look more wolf than her pack-mate. With pricked ears, she can listen to them talk, but she tunes that out and pays attention to their surroundings instead.

Close-by, the birds have fled, hearing and sensing their massive forms approaching, they’d vacated the branches and sung their songs far-off in the distance. Between her toes, Jade feels the mud beneath the carpet of leaves and needles, her powerful weight pushing past the debris and straight into the soft earth. She savours the feeling, nose swinging the other way. Across the road, there was hardly a creature. When the six of them lumbered through the forest without a care, they tended to drive away timid and aggressive creatures alike. They’d have to go elsewhere to hunt tonight, somewhere where their smell didn’t linger.

Soon, her pack-mate returns. He lays a hand in the thick fur around her neck, kneeling in the mud beside her. The others shift closer, blinking large eyes the size of her pack-mate’s fist human fist.

“There’s been some trouble in Washington,” he says, stroking her fur with brotherly love. “Up north. Mysterious injuries, a few in each town, moving further and further up.”

_A single_, she rumbles. _Pack-less?_ The others growl with similar questions.

“I don’t know, but we haven’t found him with any of the clans down south...” he says, uncertain. She licks his cheek and pushes her nose into his palm.

_You did well! We have to move on, though, we’re not welcome here,_ she says, a little disappointed. Klamath was one of her favourite places to visit, though their’s had been brief. They could run through the trees as they left, but they would have to move on. With a whine, her pack-mate joins them in his natural form, the smallest and most unassuming of them all but with the keenest nose. She was the largest of them, stark white streaked with mud. She’d never found another like her and had originally come to America to find if there were others like her, her pack. While she hadn’t, she had found a pack, and a calling, and that was enough for her.

Each of her brothers and sisters lifted their heads to howl, and she looked up to the sky. The moon, pale and ghostly, had risen beyond the horizon in the still-blue sky. A sign of luck. She joined them in song, and they broke out into a run, zipping through the trees with a grace and precision that she only enjoyed in her true form like this.

They finally had the scent, and they would catch him, no matter the cost.


	7. Unwelcome

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dave reveals some uncomfortable truths.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a little later than usual, but also a little longer!!! fair warning, there’s a lot of dave’s confused thoughts in this one, and a subtle dash of implied past child abuse in one section

After Dave’s failed escape attempt, Dave had expected that angry, cold John back. The one that had laughed at his pain and had threatened to defang him. Instead, the teasing, light-hearted John was still there. Maybe there was something about the fact that when Dave was tied up, he couldn’t do so much harm, or maybe he really had just warmed up to him, but Dave hadn’t seen that angry John since his first appearance a few days ago. For all this threats of holding out blood, that night at the next pit stop, they repeat the same song and dance. Reluctant to be left alone for the rest of the night, Dave finds himself gravitating towards John.

“You’re probably going to hate this,” Dave starts, and John makes a noise at the back of his throat. Something between an annoyed groan and a grunt of acknowledgment. “Shut up,” Dave laughs before continuing. “I don’t know, it’s nice to have a meal every day for once.”

John rolls over to face Dave with a cocked eyebrow. “Seriously? A meal?”

“Well, okay, I guess it isn’t a full meal, but—“

“That’s what you think is wrong with that sentence?”

Dave pauses, quickly flitting back a few seconds. “Oh. Right. What do you want me to call it then? Slurpy snack time? Blood bag bonanza? Plasma punch?”

“Plasma and blood are different,” John objects.

“Great, now you sound like my mom,” Dave rebukes, only for his sentence to hang in the air for a second like a cartoon character off the edge of a cliff before plummeting down and spiralling away from him.

“You have a mom?” John asks, and even he seems to realise how stupid it sounds after he says it.

“No John, I fell from the sky as a fully-grown adult sent just to torment you,” Dave says tersely. “Of course I have a mom.” He hopes his tone shuts the conversation down, but John is either too dense or too stubborn to drop it.

“Where is she?” he asks, pushing himself upright until he’s hovering over Dave.

“Drop it, okay?” Dave snaps. “I don’t ask you where your mom is, so don’t ask me about mine.”

John twists his lips in the look Dave knows as his ‘weighing the pros and cons’ face, staring blankly at Dave. “I never knew my mom,” he says. He looks at Dave like he expects him to open up to make them even.

“Good for you,” Dave mutters. “Great conversation. Now quit being an ass and get out of my face. Personal bubble, you know of it, John?”

“Does she know where you are? Or, were, I guess?” John pushes.

Dave huffs and bares his teeth. “Why do you care?”

“What’s wrong with just telling me where she is? You think I’m going to kill her or something? I’m just curious, dude,” John says. “Just tell me, I don’t know, what state she’s in! If you’d just told me—“

“I don’t know, okay John? I don’t know where my mom is, because I died and she moved! Is that what you wanted to hear?” Dave says, voice tense and loud. “So drop it, okay? Okay?”

John at least has the common decency to look at least a little sorry, but Dave knows he probably isn’t. After all, he got what he wanted, and he got Dave upset in the process. His family was one thing Dave tried to avoid thinking about. He didn’t want to think about where they might be, what they might think. In all honesty, Dave might’ve been able to find them, if he’d try. His mom wasn’t exactly a nobody, it would be possible to find out where they’d moved, but Dave had never wanted to, and for very good reasons. “When I say drop it, I mean it,” Dave says hoarsely after a lull in which John doesn’t respond.

“Sorry,” he says. “About your mom, too.”

“Just leave it,” Dave says, feeling so, so tired. A familiar ache pulses in his chest. Hollow and cold, it settles into his chest like it never left, which it never really did.

They don’t talk for the rest of the night, but unlike John, Dave is left to stay awake for hours on end, just thinking about what had happened. They weren’t friends. They were still too prickly and distrusting for that. But, Dave didn’t feel like they were enemies anymore, if they ever were. John and him were still just some twenty-somethings trying to do what they thought they had to.

Dave casts back to that fight they’d had. Something had stuck with him. ‘Killing the Strider clan, like I’m supposed to’. Dave knew what that was like. He wonder who had shouldered John with that task and why. Why put himself up to such an impossible task? Sitting and stewing in it won’t give Dave any answers, so he forces himself to think of something else while John sleeps beside him.

In the morning, they’re back on the road. John doesn’t veer out of California just yet, working his way deeper into the state and on towards Yuba city. The sun isn’t warm, but it’s warmer than Washington, and Dave feels both relieved and apprehensive. The warmer it got, the more likely they were to run into more vampires. Aside from blood, the warmth was the only other thing that attracted vampires like flies. He wishes he could enjoy baking in the sun more, but they’re constantly on the move, flitting from place to place, stopping only when its cold and dark.

They truck onwards, John and Dave talking much less than the day before.

Finally, John breaks the silence. “When we get to the hideout, how many vampires do you think will be in there? I don’t know— does your clan leader only keep his favourites around?” John tries to sound casual, like he was making conversation, but it was easy to tell that this was vital information for a hunter.

Whatever Dave said would change what John did next. As tempting as it was to lie and say there were thousands or only two, just to fuck with him, a tiny pang of guilt and responsibility stops him. Dave wasn’t sure how smart it was, letting himself feel just a little bit for the human, especially when Dave was, when it boiled down to it, leading John into a trap. He really doubted John was going to make it out of there alive, no matter the guns and stakes and potions he armed himself with.

He tries not to let it get to him, thinking about how they’ll soon be in Texas, soon be close to the den where John will let him go, finally.

“How many?” he muses, looking up at the roof of the truck. “God, I don’t know. Last time I was there—“ he stops, swallows, clears his throat. “It was the day I ran away. That was, what, five years ago now? I don’t really remember.” He pauses to think, shifting in his seat. With the pillows John had oh so generously supplied, it wasn’t half uncomfortable, though the subject matter is uncomfortable enough to more than make up for that.

“I guess there’s usually a couple hundred? Bro— I mean, the, you know, leader? He always had an inner circle. The more powerful vampires.” He wills his eyes back in his head, trying to remember what he could. “Bro always stays in the center, all the youngbloods on the outside, so you’ll have to get past, like, a lot of vampires.” He lets out a long sign. “And I’m not sneaking you in, either. I’m... not exactly welcome anymore.”

“Unwelcome?” John prompts, and Dave scowls.

“Yeah, I’m unwelcome, John. Any other questions?”

John pauses. “You said youngbloods. What, that’s like, new vampires?”

A stone drops in his gut as he remembers them. He hadn’t meant to mention them, thinking maybe if John didn’t know, it would protect them from his vendetta. “Sort of,” Dave mumbles, rocking his head, trying to stretch the cramps from his shoulders.

“Sort of?” John says, sounding a little exasperated.

“Hey, don’t take that tone with me. I’m a regular old encyclopaedia of knowledge right now, you should be down on your knees thanking me.” John gives him a long-suffering look in the rear-view mirror. “Fine, fine. A new vampire is a newblood, funnily enough. I’m technically a newblood. I guess you could say my sixth deathday is coming up.”

John must sense his reluctance to talk about the youngbloods, because he slows down and pulls over to twist in his seat to look at Dave. “Just tell me, dude. I’m going to find out when we get there anyway.”

Dave chews his lip and avoids his eye. He was right, but that didn’t make Dave want to kick himself any less for mentioning it at all. “They’re, you know. Young.” John looks blankly at him. “Young, like human young, not vampire young. Kids.” John pales instantly and Dave feels sick to his stomach.

“What, you thought I wouldn’t notice them? You thought you could hide that from me?” John says, bristling. “You thought I wouldn’t find out that you—“

“I was trying to protect them!” Dave yells.

“From what?”

“From _you_!” Dave feels his desperation boiling up. “They didn’t deserve what they got, and they can’t help it any more than I can, but they’re fucking kids! They kill because they’re told to and they don’t know anything other than Bro, they can’t help it. Sorry that I didn’t want them all murdered in cold blood because you wouldn’t understand that,” he spits, shaking with barely concealed upset.

John instantly deflates, sitting back in his seat. “I— Fuck. Sorry, Dave.” It feels like a splash of cold water to his face, Dave taking his turn to look blank and confused. “I thought you were hiding them so I wouldn’t... I don’t know. Try and save them.”

And it was all over before Dave could really understand. A weird outburst of emotion that neither of them had really expected. John reaches out and awkwardly pats Dave’s leg, cementing this one strange point of commonality. They both agreed on something like this.

“If...” John starts, turning back to look out the windshield. “If it’s worth anything, I don’t think you deserved it either.” John says, cars whizzing past and highlighting his face with beams of light, cutting through the elongating shadows of a gloomy winter day. Hot wetness chokes Dave’s throat and he stares diligently at the car roof.

“Thanks,” he whispers.

John clears his throat, breaking the spell as he sits back upright and starts the car again. “Don’t get me wrong, I still think vampires suck shit, but you wouldn’t be too bad if you were still human.” Dave makes a wet-sounding laugh, shaking his head. “You’re just a goofy idiot, that’s all,” he says, and Dave can hear the smile in his voice as well.

Neither of them feel much like driving anymore, so as they approach Yuba city and John catches sight of the signs, they decide to make a small detour. Yuba was apparently the home to the California state fair every year, and though there probably wouldn’t be anything on this time of year, John still insisted they go have a look.

Everything was closed off, naturally, but neither of them wanted to keep going and think about what it was they were driving towards, so the distraction was welcome. It was mid-afternoon on a weekday, leaving them mostly to themselves, allowing them to explore the surrounding areas of the grounds in peace. John even stopped to conduct some wriggling and manoeuvring to get Dave into an upright position to look out the window at the scenery.

It turned out that most of the attractions and stalls stayed up after the fair a couple of months ago, so after some creeping and off-road driving, John gets them inside, both of them laughing conspiratorially. It was all very dumb and completely unimportant, but Dave let himself be swept up in the excitement. There they were, driving through a closed fairground, looking at the motionless ferris wheel and dark cotton candy stalls, giggling like they were getting away with something incredible.

John finds a dark corner and parks, clambering out of the truck. It was evening by then, and there was no sign of any security, so they don’t bother to be quiet as they laugh at each other. John grabs Dave’s legs and pulls him out, hoisting him back into the truck bed. “We’re not sleeping here, are we?” Dave protests, John flopping down to sit next to him.

“Don’t be dumb! This would be the worst situation to be caught trespassing in. I just wanted some fresh air,” he looks pointedly at Dave, and Dave feels that prickle of a flush that doesn’t really exist. Without blood, it was kind of hard to go red. At least, that had been his experience thus far—

“You can blush!” John exclaims, taking Dave aback.

“No I can’t,” he says defensively.

“Gross, is that my blood then?” John says, face screwing up, only making Dave feel warmer.

“Shut up! It’s because I’ve actually been eating decently for once, I guess...” he mumbles, but John has already lost interest, looking up at the sky. It was a lot dimmer in the middle of a city, but within the dark fairground, some stars could be seen. The cloud cover had cleared slightly, opening up the night sky for them to observe.

Maybe if Dave was human, he could have fallen asleep like that. He remembers long, hot nights on the roof of his house, side-by-side with his sister. They had an observatory, but they both didn’t care, pointing at made-up and recorded constellations alike and trying to trick each other that more and more absurd ones were real. He could smile at the memory, but it only makes his chest ache with a longing pain to be back there, in a time where they were joined at the hip, where they went to school together, where they would sneak around their too-big house and mess with mom’s paintings, or her liquor cabinet. It wasn’t easy all the time, and things had never been perfect, but even then Dave knew he would miss it if it was gone.

“You know,” John says softly, jolting Dave out of his daze. “I really am sorry, about what I said before. I shouldn’t have been so pushy. I get it, I guess.” John spoke so softly it was barely a whisper. Dave could hear him just fine with a prick of the ears, but he still felt obligated to match his tone.

“About my mom?” Dave says back, his own sadness evident in his voice.

“Yeah,” John sighs, not tearing his eyes from the sky. There’s another long silence, but this one feels more like a build-up, like John wanted to say more. Dave waits patiently, recognising that whatever John wanted to say, it wasn’t easy for him to admit. “My dad... He was— He taught me what I know, and now he’s gone.”

It was so simple, but Dave understood perfectly.

“How long?” he says gently.

“Five months.” John’s voice laden with something. It was heavy with guilt, or shame maybe, or just plain sorrow. It was written over his face and in the way he pulled an arm up to rake through his hair. “But I get it. Not wanting to talk about it, anyway.”

“Agree to both never mention it again, then?” A surprised laugh rips from John and bursts through the air like fireflies erupting from a formerly-undisturbed field. It fills the air with lightness that hadn’t been there before, but it was carried on a wind of deep, crushing sadness.

“Sounds fine to me,” John says.

They lie for longer after that, John looking contemplative, Dave just as lost in his own thoughts.

The angry man Dave had met all those months ago, about five if he had to guess— that man felt so far away but so understandable now. It wasn’t just Dave, just vampires, or just the supernatural that he’d been mad at. He’d probably been mad at the world in general. God knows Dave went through that when he’d died, and that had been just a mourning for the self he’d lost. He can’t imagine losing a parent like that, a parent that had taught him and raised him and, presumably, loved him and cared for him.

Despite it all, despite the anger and confusion that muddled those months of being taunted and hated and chased, Dave knew he wasn’t mad at John for that anymore. It was probably stupid, even just the thought of it felt like he was being an outright fool, but Dave had already been grasping at the last wisps of his hatred since they’d started talking for real. That didn’t mean he wasn’t at least a little annoyed at being tied up and lugged around like dead weight, but that consuming impression of personal hatred was hard to maintain. He was mad at the situation, but not at John as a person— at least for the night.

“You’re okay, you know,” Dave says, fighting a smile. “When you’re not trying to kill me.”

Maybe it was the indulgent thoughts that this wasn’t so bad— that John wasn’t so bad, that made him say it, but Dave didn’t regret it much at all. It was all worth it for the way John looks at him in surprise and shock, face cracking and crumbling into a confused smile.

“You know what?” he laughs. “I think I was just thinking the same thing.”

Apparently feeling like a splurge while in the big city, John decides on a motel that night. True to his word it had all the ammenities— wifi, complimentary breakfast, even a common area with a TV and free coffee and tea 24/7. They check in late to avoid curious eyes as John carries him inside.

John goes through a much more thorough night routine before bed, actually taking a long, hot shower and combing out his hair. The past few nights he’d either washed with a cloth and warm water or not at all. It was a little gross, but Dave couldn’t say anything. He bathed in rivers and lakes in the woods most of the time and had little access to showers bar the ones in the homeless shelters he sometimes went to. He’d always feel bad using the services when it seemed almost wrong to call himself homeless, despite it being technically true. He wouldn’t eat there, or sleep, or use basically any of the services aside from a shower and maybe some clothes, then he’d skip town and never be seen again. It seemed so disingenuous.

The sound of the shower running made him feel grimy, craving a shower of his own to wash away the last few days. Apparently, the thought occurred to John too.

“You kind of stink,” he says to Dave, propped up with some pillows and watching the whatever John had put on the tiny TV before his shower.

“You would too if you were me,” Dave says, feeling cranky. He was grimy and hungry and feeling more than a little jittery from their conversation earlier. It had been all of three days and Dave was already second-guessing the last six months of his life.

John huffs and throws the towel he’d been using on his hair aside. “That’s why I’m bringing it up, asshole,” he says, walking over to his duffel bag. He digs around in his bag for a while, tongue sticking out as he searches for something. When he finds it, it turns out to be some weird-looking hook with runes carved along the handle. He roots around some more and pulls out a toolbox-looking case, different from John’s actual toolbox. If he cranes his neck, Dave can see its full of bottles and baggies and containers of various things. He can smell garlic, silver, holy water, thyme, something ashy and wood-smoke-like, wolfsbane, rosemary, iron and copper, and a whole range of smells that leave Dave dizzy with the overwhelming breadth of it all. John shakes a phial and uncorks it, screwing his mouth up and squinting at the small amount left. When Dave finally regains himself, he clears his throat.

“And why _are_ you bringing it up?” he asks pointedly.

John snaps out of his focus and looks up at Dave, as if he hadn’t been mid-conversation moments before. “Oh, right! Just be patient,” is all he says, going back to the hook and the components. Finally, he seems to have done whatever it was he was trying to do, because he snaps the box closed with a satisfying thunk. “Sit up,” he says, Dave reluctantly doing so. John moves around the bed and stops just in sight, slightly behind Dave. He feels him fiddling at a spot just by one of Dave’s elbows, before he feels what can only be described as a sudden pop inside his chest and shoulders that makes him collapse like his strings were cut.

It feels as though a part of him was leaking out, leaving his body, before it’s suddenly plugged up, the bath refilling inside him. He regains control of himself and whatever it was that was leaving him is back. He has no idea what happened, only that something did. John is still at his arm, working, his grip the only thing keeping him from folding in half, head to knees.

“There!” he says, and Dave blinks at him blearily. Seeing his confusion, he tugs on Dave’s arm, and he feels it come loose, away from his side. “See?” Dave tears his eyes from John’s smug expression to puzzle together what just happened.

The popping, he realised, must’ve been the feeling of the paralysing aspect of John’s spell dissipating, at least temporarily. Using the weird hook, John had undone whatever knot was keeping the bindings together, re-tying them much looser than before. Now, the ropes were secured around Dave upper arms, looping across his back and joining them together. They were still restricting, and nothing had changed in the leg department, but if he moved his arms just right, he could reach his head or hold his arms out in front of him. His elbows stayed mostly stuck to his sides, but already Dave could feel the relief a little freedom gave him.

The first thing he does is furiously scratch his head, shaking out his hair and huffing. “God I need a shower,” he says, dragging his hands over his face, enjoying being able to do it at all.

“Sorry it’s not like, completely undone,” John says, fidgeting with the tool in his hands. “I mean, you’re still...”

“It’s okay for now,” Dave cuts him off. He doesn’t want to hear again how much John thinks Dave might kill him in his sleep. “I’d probably tie me up too.” John shrugs and goes back to his bag, putting everything away.

“I can carry you in, though, if you want,” John says, and Dave gives him a confused look. “To the shower,” he says when Dave still looks like he isn’t following. His expression morphs into disbelief, and John crosses his arms. “What?” he says, sounding defensive. “Your arms are freer now, right?”

Dave leans back against the pillows with a half-grimace on his face. “I mean, sure. But how am I meant to take my clothes off?” John instantly flushes and Dave knows he hadn’t thought of that. “All that and you thought I’d shower in my clothes?” Dave says, incredulous.

“I didn’t think about it! Sorry for not thinking about you naked, Dave,” John says.

“What a gentleman,” Dave says dryly. There’s no immediate reply, and Dave looks over to John, finding him looking distinctly uncomfortable. Dave sighs, shrugging his shoulders. “It’s okay dude, I’m just teasing you. We can figure something out later. I feel better just being able to do this,” he says, John looking up to see. Dave flips him the double bird and John rolls his eyes, throwing his hands up in defeat.

That night is good. John seems to be a little more comfortable with feeding Dave, and Dave is able to be even gentler and accurate with his slightly-free hands. The bed is better than John’s truck no matter what he says, and with his sensitive hearing, he’s able to watch TV on the lowest volume without waking John.

Dave enjoys scratching his nose and fixing his hair, and most importantly, eating his own food for the most part. The next day John even agrees to find Dave a few magazines and comic books to read for the nights. For once, they’re not up early, they’re not driving all day. Maybe John is just making sure that he didn’t make the wrong move loosening Dave’s bonds, maybe he’s just tired of driving, but either way, Dave wasn’t going to complain.

The more time they spent in one place, the longer it was going to take for them to get to Texas. Hopefully by then, something changes. Either Dave gets a chance to escape, John realises he’s an idiot for trying this, or Dave convinces him that he shouldn’t. No matter what happened, facing the Striders was the last thing on Dave’s list of things to do, and he wasn’t planning on letting John force him into it. At the moment he thought he was, but Dave hadn’t given up on the idea of turning the tables and coming out on top.

They don’t sleep in the motel again, clearing out their stuff and driving to a rest stop just outside of town instead. John doesn’t say why, but something tells Dave he’s had the same thoughts as Dave. The longer they were in one place, the further away Texas felt. They apparently still had a lot of stops to make before John would consider himself ready to take on the supposed ‘Prince of Vampires’, so Dave’s counting on some time to come up on a plan yet.

They don’t mention again their little heart-to-hearts the day before. Neither of them suddenly decide to open up about their parents, or their feelings, or anything like that. They just mutually and silently agree that the relationship dynamic had changed. To what, Dave didn’t know, but to something less antagonistic, surely.

Dave only feels more confused at that night’s feeding, with a simple question.

“Are you sure that’s enough?” John asks him, already drinking one of the juice boxes that had become a staple bedtime drink for him.

Dave pauses in wiping the corner of his mouth. “What?”

“You know— enough to drink?” John says. Dave considers this.

“It’s enough that I won’t starve, if that’s what you mean,” he finally says, chewing on his thumbnail nervously.

“Not enough to be filling, though,” John guesses, correctly. He watches Dave’s face, searching for something. Feeling nauseated, Dave shrugs and looks away, still gnawing on his nail. He feels John’s hand on his wrist and he looks back at him, annoyed. John pulls his hand from his mouth with a half-smile and a raised brow. “You do that when you don’t want to say something,” he says and Dave scrunches his nose in distaste at being read so easily.

“Pointing that out won’t make me say anything,” Dave says. John only laughs and pulls his hands away, holding them up in surrender.

“Fine, whatever bro,” he says, and Dave feels his stomach flip.

The general nausea around having to drink blood builds up, combined with the almost silly reminder of Bro, of what was coming. He feels sick, blood curdling in his stomach. “Just ‘cause I need it doesn’t mean I like it,” Dave says, swallowing down bile.

“Sorry, sore subject?” John says, and Dave nods. Another thing to add to the list of things not to talk about, it seemed. This one would be harder to avoid than others, but Dave’s general unease about having to drink John’s blood had only been building over the past few days. Things were changing, becoming unknowable, and Dave didn’t know how to grasp it all.

“You wouldn’t get it,” Dave says, turning away fully so John couldn’t see his face.

With a heaving sigh, John takes the hint and follows suit, rolling over in bed and pulling the blankets up. After a while, his breathing evens out and his heart slows, and Dave knows he’s asleep and can finally let out a breath.

The night is cold, but Dave doesn’t dare try and get under the blankets. After that first night with John pressed up against him, Dave had done his best to stay sitting up, or on top of the blankets, trying to avoid it happening again. If John noticed, he didn’t say anything, but he didn’t seem to feel any differently about that than he did about Dave in his bed, so nothing needed to be said.

The thought, unbidden, comes to him that Dave hadn’t really touched John since his arms being loosened. Except for the steadying hand on his elbow while he’d fed, he hadn’t so much as brushed against him while passing him a juice box, or a bag of chips. The idea of doing it, just reaching out and touching him, jars Dave into a spiral of confusion. What was happening to him? After all that had happened over the last few months, why now did he suddenly feel so friendly towards John, so fond of him?

He didn’t want to be friends with John, he wanted to be as far from him as possible. He wanted things to go back to the way they were. And Dave doesn’t acknowledge even to himself, that by the way things were, he really just means before he felt this way. He wanted that easy banter where they could pretend that they hated each other more than they did. Where Dave would try and outrun him and never win. When he thought back on the way things were, John seemed friendlier, their interactions more civil. If he fooled himself, they were friendly, but Dave didn’t have to be forced to face it like he was now.

He wanted, he begrudgingly admits, for this funny and thoughtful John he enjoyed now, but to have him back in Washington, and Dave wonders if this was about John at all. His chest aches and his head spins and he groans up at the wintry sky, forced to think himself into a deeper and deeper hole until the sun rose.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and sam is still my inspiration for it all  
next chapter is going to be more internal musing, so just a heads up  
thank you all so much for your kudos and comments, they mean the world and keep me writing


	8. Friends with a Vampire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John wonders if it’s so bad to be friends with a vampire.

You’re okay, John thinks. That’s what he’d said. You’re okay. Like they’d met each other innocently in class or out at a coffee shop and had stumbled into getting to know each other. Like John hadn’t essentially kidnapped Dave and taken him on a cross-country trip of his nightmares. Or, daymares? John had yet to see Dave sleep and it seemed like he really didn’t. He’d asked for comics or books to read during the night, and John, feeling as guilty as he was, couldn’t really say no. Dave still hadn’t gotten the shower he wanted, but John had at least agreed to help him at the next rest stop to figure something out to get him clean. He’d expected Dave to argue that John should cut him loose and let him shower, but Dave seemed to understand, or at least accept, John’s apprehension about doing that, even if they were becoming friends.

Friends. There was that word John had been avoiding. His hands tighten on the steering wheel minutely and he forces himself to pay closer attention to the present. Don’t dwell on that, it was dangerous waters.

Dave was rapid-fire flicking through John’s music, each song lasting no more than a handful of beats before it was gone, subject to Dave’s whims. John found he did that a lot. When John had asked him about it, Dave had been surprisingly open and amused by the question.

“I’m kind of behind on the music scene,” he’d said. “I have six years of music to catch up on, and you’re my only source.”

When they stopped at a McDonald’s, John had abused the free wifi to download some top forty playlists from the last few years, and Dave had seemed inordinately happy about that. Now instead of skipping through John’s eclectic taste in music that ranged from older than him to released this year, Dave could take a chronological journey through the years he’d missed. It had made John’s chest swell painfully to think about. He knew it was because he felt bad for Dave, stuck like this in a perpetual state of frozen time.

John thought about the night before, about how amazed Dave had looked as they gazed up at the sky in a half-abandoned fairground. Had Dave ever been to a fair before? He hadn’t asked last night, too afraid that more probing questions would strain their delicate friendship further than it could stand.

Friendship again. John bites his lip and he knows he isn’t going to be able to avoid the truth for much longer. He liked Dave. He was funny and relaxing and cool in a dorky way. Maybe if they’d met in another time, another place...

John pulls over at the next gas station, lingering just outside view to go through the motions of hiding Dave.

“Already?” Dave says, and it hits John just wrong. Just how much they’d settled into this rhythm, this routine that John had forced upon them.

“Just need to take a leak,” he says, and Dave grunts noncommittally.

“Can you leave the engine running then?” he waves John’s phone and grins. “Still got, like, 700 hours of music to get through in the next three weeks.”

Of course, John didn’t really need to go to the bathroom, and he’s weirdly guilty about the white lie as he heads inside. People lied about that kind of thing all the time. It wasn’t weird to lie about going to the bathroom, and he’d lied about worse things! Like his bluff about pulling out Dave’s teeth. He’d never be able to go through with something like that, but he’d lied through his teeth and made a show of demonstrating that he could, if he wanted to. He hadn’t felt guilty about that! Well, he hadn’t until now.

John leans heavily on the sink and looks at himself in the mirror. He hair was as messy as it always was, his clothes a rumpled mess. His glasses were smudged with fingerprints and general grease, barely hiding the bags under his eyes. It wasn’t that he hadn’t been sleeping well, his sleeping had been fine, but something about the last week was just draining. It had been six days since they’d started driving he thinks after some quick maths. After six days with a vampire he was already betraying his dad.

He thinks on his late father’s words. He thinks about his conviction to rid the world of those that did harm, about how proud he had been as John had trained under him. What would he think now, keeping one of those killers close, letting him have freedom, becoming friends with him. Did Dave fall under that definition? Did he cause harm? His eyes drift to his bandaged wrist. He knows what’s underneath. Six days worth of bites, small holes in his skin, healed over but white and stark compared to the dark colour of his arm. They stood out like blinking lights, little bulbs of flashing white that told him that Dave was still a killer, no matter how funny or nice or harmless he seemed. He’d killed before, John knew that, he had to have killed. If there was one horrifying fact about vampire biology that he knew it was that it took almost all the blood in an average adult’s body to complete the transformation from human to vampire. John knows Dave had to have done that to be a vampire now, but he’d been refusing to think about it.

Maybe that’s what made vampires to monstrous, John thinks. The fact that they can be charming or funny or compelling while being murderers. That the lives they’ve taken and the people they’ve hurt can impact them so little. John wants to believe that, and maybe it’s true, but it feels wrong applied to Dave. John has seen the haunted look Dave has when he thinks John isn’t looking, or when he talks about his nature. He’s seen the way he looks disgusted at himself when the high of been fed starts to fade. After that initial bump of energy he seems to fold in on himself somewhat, like he’s guilty that it felt good.

John leans his forehead against the glass, heaving a sigh. He can’t change anything now. He’s betrayed his father’s wishes. He’s friends with a vampire.

Back in the truck, John knows he’s being distant. He’s noncommittal in his answers and Dave must notice. He backs off and even lets the songs play through instead of bothering John more. The fact that he picks up on John’s mood and adjusts his behaviour like they’d been friends for years only sours John’s mood more.

He focuses instead on getting out of California and making his way into Nevada. He stays off the main roads while he can, winding through the Californian landscape and thinking. He thinks a lot more than he used to, now. Driving had always been where he did his most thinking, but now it was different. Instead of thinking practically, about what he needed to buy, where he’d sleep, what his next steps were, he was caught in an endless loop of self doubt. Doubting his purchases, his pit stops, his decisions. Doubting every word he said to Dave and every word he didn’t. They hadn’t even reached the boarder and John feels fit to burst.

“Okay, fine, I give in,” Dave says, popping John’s introspection bubble. “What’s wrong?” John startles and catches Dave’s strange eyes in the rear-view mirror.

“What?” he says, genuinely taken aback.

“You’ve been making that constipated face ever since you went for a piss. What happened?” Dave says. His eyes truly were strange. They looked like they might’ve once been brown, shot through with that unnatural red and slitted like a cat’s. “John?”

John shakes himself off. “It’s— I’m just worried, I guess,” he admits, eyes back on the road.

“I’ll bite. What are you worried about?”

“Texas,” John says, half truthful. It was a little bit of a low blow. John could see the way Dave’s face shifts and closes off in his mind’s eye. He knew any mention of Texas sent Dave retreating into himself, caught up in his own thoughts.

But Dave surprises him. “Do you want to talk about it?” John’s hands grip even tighter at the wheel and he knows they would be shaking if he wasn’t. He’s in no state to drive, heart starting to flutter painfully and tension locking his shoulders. He pulls over haphazardly and sucks in a breath. Behind him, Dave sits up. “John?”

“I’m—“ John starts, voice sounding strained. “I’m worried the other vampires will be like you,” he says, shocking himself.

Dave looks equally surprised, then confused. “In what way?” he says, obviously hesitant of John’s answer.

John hadn’t even known what he was going to say when he said it, so he’d just as confused as the vampire. It dawns on him that yeah, this really was what he was anxious about, what was whipping him into a frenzy. It clears in his mind as he talks, as he lays it all out for Dave to see.

“I’m worried they’ll be... human,” he says, slumping in his seat and looking out the windshield. “That they’ll be kind, or funny, or smart,” he continues, feeling Dave’s heated gaze on his shoulders, on the side of his face. “That they’ll be like you, and I won’t be able to kill them.” He can’t bring himself to look and see what Dave’s reaction will be. “Because— because if they’re like you, it would be like killing a friend.”

There’s a long silence. John doesn’t know if it’s awkward, or stunned, or relieved, or all three. He doesn’t want to know because knowing might bring back the weight he’d just lifted from his chest. In stunning clarity, he knew why he really didn’t want to be Dave’s friend, why he didn’t want to accept the humanity of being a vampire. Because if he did that for Dave, then how could he go through with his quest? How could he murder a vampire, knowing they had the capacity to be caring, and considerate and so, so painfully human.

Instead of an answer, John gets a cold hand on his elbow, then his shoulder. “John,” Dave finally says, and he forces himself to look. Dave’s eyes are wet like he’s trying not to cry. “Sorry,” he says with a sniffle and a self-deprecating smile. “It’s just... you called me human. You called me a friend.”

“Yeah,” John says, a half-smile wiggling free. “Seems dumb to try and pretend I don’t think you’re pretty okay,” he says slyly. Dave laughs, his arms straining like he wants to give John a hug and can’t.

“What a dumb thing to get emotional over,” Dave says, his hand sliding off John as he sits back in his seat. “Someone saying they’re your friend.”

“Most people’s friends don’t try and kill them,” John points out, but Dave seems nonplussed, grinning at John wider than he’d seen him smile before.

“Well, as long as you pinky promise to never ever try and kill me again and I do the same, I think we’re about on the same level as normal friends.”

“I never tried to kill you,” John admits. “Not really.”

“Me neither,” Dave says, smile softening.

John stretches his hand out to Dave, head cocked and hesitant. “So, friends then?”

Dave doesn’t take his hand, instead reaching up and hooking their pinkies together with a smirk. “Friends,” he agrees. With an eye roll, John curls his pinky around Dave’s and they shake their hands, like kids in a playground. Dave’s hands are cold and a little calloused, but his fingers were weirdly delicate-feeling.

“We should probably properly introduce ourselves, then,” John says once their hands part. Dave laughs and shrugs. “I’m Johnathon Egbert,” John says. “But my friends call me John.”

Dave looks considerate for a moment, and John wishes he knew what he was thinking. “Well, nice to meet you John Egbert. I’m Dave Lalonde,” he says, his eyes fixed on John in that way that made John feel like he was being tested.

“Nice to meet you, Dave Lalonde,” he says, feeling oddly... privileged. Of course he had a real last name. Of course he wouldn’t use the last name of his vampire family. Dave had said as much— he wasn’t welcome. John wondered if he’d get that story now that they were friends. Dave grinned, face a little flushed.

Friends. Now instead of swirling dread and anxiety, that word made his chest squeeze in happiness. How long since he’d had an honest-to-God friend? Since high school at least, surely. When he left without graduating, he’d almost immediately fallen out of touch with anyone he’d been friendly with. After that he had his hunter contacts, but most of those were professional, or he saw them so infrequently that they felt like they were temporary. When he saw them, they were close like they were the best-est of friends, but once one of them moved on, they were barely spared a thought.

Dave was like a mix of both. A friendship forged through being put together for long periods of time, but a friend with a set expiration date. After Texas, Dave would be free, and they’d go their seperate ways. His face wouldn’t fade like his high school friends, their friendship was too strange and unique for that, but he wouldn’t be someone John could visit like his hunter contacts. He was both, and he was neither.

It was something new altogether.

This probably wasn’t how people were meant to make friends, but John didn’t mind and Dave didn’t seem to either. It seemed like it had been a while since Dave had had a friend as well, so they were content to figure it out together.

º

The path from one side of Washington to the other was easy to follow, even if they didn’t have the scent. Newspapers and word of mouth told them exactly the journey the vampire had taken, flitting from town to town, never settling, never lingering. After the first few towns, though, the scent was lighter, like he spent less and less time in each, and mingled with another. The earthy scent of a human, tanged with the signs of a hunter. When Jade figured that out, she and her pack grew anxious. If a hunter had started following him before they even got the job, what were the chances he was still alive?

Hope bloomed the longer they ran. The vampire seemed to always be just a little ahead, in town for a little while before being chased off. Either the hunter following him was inept, or not willing to kill. Either way, it meant there was a good change Dave hadn’t been murdered before they could get to him. Occasionally, the scent would become so faint she and the pack would pause to re-capture it.

They’d received a variety of items from his family to aid in tracking him down— some clothes, a pillowcase, a hairbrush, and lastly, a photo. The photo wasn’t necessary for them so much, but more so to show to locals and police, hoping to gather intel on Dave’s movements. They could trace Dave a certain amount, but they had no idea what he did in each place aside from what made it into the news.

In some towns, he got in trouble with the law, or had run-ins with other supernatural. In other towns, he seemed to leave barely a trace, like a ghost passing through. Those towns were the easiest, though. Those were the times when the scent was clear, even when faint, and usually moved on quickly, allowing the pack to skip over that town entirely and continue on. The times where he lingered were hardest. They’d have to follow him all through town, trying to find the line of scent that showed which direction he went next, picking him out from a muddled cacophony of smells, usually involving the hunter.

They’d sometimes find spots that filled Jade with dread. Spots that smelt of blood and pine and holy water, things she knew would hurt Dave, but on close inspection, the blood was always purely human. It didn’t smelt the indescribably way blood smelt when it came out of a vampire after digestion.

They had made good time. It took them only a few hours per town at most, allowing them to cover more ground in a day then Dave did in a month. They were hopeful, optimistic, confident. Then the trail went cold. Or, not cold, but changed.

They followed Dave to a motel, something he didn’t usually go to, and found a room reeking of a fight. The smells of the hunter’s poisons and potions, the smell of fear and desperation, though from who it wasn’t clear. There had been an ultimatum here, Jade knew, and it was uncertain as to who had come been making it. The fact that Dave’s scent seems to vanish gives her a bad feeling, though.

It was time to go back to good old-fashioned detective work it seemed. They spread out, trying to figure out where Dave had gone and why.

At the motel reception, Jade flashed the photo of Dave, though no one had seen him. By pretending to be a concerned sister looking for her brother, she manages to get the name the motel room was booked under out of the teenage receptionist. John Wilson she said, and Jade flashed her a toothy grin.

So, they had a name, though they were quick to realise that it wouldn’t get them far. A brother found traces of another John at a diner, though this one was a Jackson, and it soon became apparent that their mystery hunter wasn’t completely useless. He had false IDs, and multiple at that, and getting any idea of where he’d gone and if he’d taken Dave with him was going to be tricky. Finally, it’s decided that the pack should split into smaller groups and fan out on the main egresses from the town. If they could pick up either Dave or John’s scent outside of town, they might be able to figure out what direction they needed to go in.

It was taking too long to get over this obstacle, and it was making Jade jumpy. The longer they hung around, the harder it would be to pick up Dave’s scent. It was continue to fade, no matter where they were, and they needed to move fast.

Jade thinks of the desperate woman who’d come to find her in Salt Lake City. What places she’d had to go and favours she’d had to use to find Jade, to ask her to help. Jade’s human hand goes to her wrist and touches her grandpa’s emblem, the symbol of his life and death, and her jaw sets. She was determined to find Dave. This was more important than any of the other jobs she’d been given, and she wasn’t going to let this stop her.

She calls back the pack to regroup. “We should check gas stations and rest stops,” she says. “If this hunter is able to keep up with a newblood vampire, he’s driving, and he’s driving a lot. We know he’s alone, so he can’t be driving nonstop.”

This time, there’s more success. They find gas stations off main roads and hidden rest stops, many with the hunter’s scent, until finally they find the freshest, mingled with the distinctive smell of Dave, and of human blood. The hunter was taking John somewhere, feeding him, keeping him alive. For what? And why was Dave going with him? Did John promise or threaten him with something? Or was the potion that was now constantly attached to his scent have something to do with forcing him along?

Whatever the case, they new how to track him now. Splitting into smaller groups, they continued their strategy. Finding surrounding gas stations and rest stops, finding John’s scent, following him to the next one. They manage to get a general description of the truck he was driving, and then a strange story of a customer saying they saw a man swaddled like a baby in the backseat of a truck matching the description parked in a parking lot.

One night, on the boarder between Washington and Oregon as they prepared to sleep, her packmate wonders, _what purpose could a hunter have for a vampire?_ and Jade’s agreement rumbled in her chest.

_Well,_ she says. _What can vampires do that humans can’t?_

_Drink blood,_ someone says, making a few others bark in amusement. _Run fast, see far, lift heavy objects,_ others continue.

_Nothing that couldn’t be done without the help of other humans or machines,_ Jade points out.

_Smell other vampires?_ ventures another. Jade bares her teeth in a smile.

_Yes, I think so. I think our hunter is looking for a different vampire and needs Dave to help find him._

They sit with quiet curious thoughts, wondering who the hunter was looking for and why.

_Why not ask a coldblood?_ someone asks, causing a round of derisive laughter among the pack.

_Why do you think the coldbloods are alive?_ a sister asks. _Because the hunters don’t know about them._

º

“So that’s why you’re all down south?” John says, everything clicking into place. It was as he suspected, but it was nice hearing it from the horse’s mouth.

“You should see Florida. Crawling with vampires, basically all year round. Can’t get enough of the place,” Dave says, and he sounds wistful, like he misses the heat and warmth of the south himself.

“So why come up north then?” John says, trying to be gentle. Outside the truck, the sky was darkening, casting Dave’s face into shadow. From his infrequent glances, John couldn’t quite pin how he was feeling in any given moment, hidden from his view.

“To get away,” Dave says. “To survive, you know.” He pauses, shifting in place. “I’d rather not...”

“Right,” John says quickly. “Of course.”

When they finally stop just outside Fallon, the day’s exhaustion finally catches up with John. Still, he doesn’t get ready for bed just yet, eying the public toilets thoughtfully. Dave knocks on the window and pulls John back to what’s in front of him, opening the door and hoisting Dave out. “Why are you so light?” he says, continuing to drill Dave on vampire biology. Dave had a lot of answers, but he didn’t seem to know everything either, saying there wasn’t exactly a book on the subject out there.

Dave pats his chest. “Half my organs shut down and rotted when I died,” he says, seeming undisturbed by that. “Body’s full of that vampire venom goo I told you about.”

“Gross, really?” John says, laying Dave out on the bed.

“Yeah. Liver, kidneys, that sort of thing. Lungs and heart are still in here,” he says, tapping his chest again, then pats his stomach. “Stomach and intestines are gone, I think. Don’t ask me how it works, though.” He touches his pelvis and looks thoughtful. “Don’t know about my uterus, though. I can’t imagine it’s much use, but who knows what goes on in here.”

John pauses, shooting Dave a confused look. “Your what?” he asks.

“My uterus,” Dave repeats, arching a brow. “You know, the thing connected to my vagina?”

John flushes in embarrassment. “Oh. Sorry,” he mumbles, still a little lost.

“I’m trans,” Dave says slowly, like he was speaking to a child. He seemed somewhat nervous behind the cockiness and John quickly jumps in to try and save some face.

“Yeah, no, sorry, I wasn’t thinking. Of course.” John remembers something about trans people from his time in high school. There had been something about bathrooms and who could pee where, and John had been pretty uninvolved. It didn’t seem to matter to him who peed where. People should be able to relieve themselves wherever they wanted— as long as it was in a toilet and not on the floor. Apparently, though, this had been an issue, particularly with who could go into the women’s room. Unfortunately, John hadn’t paid much attention at that time, already in the midst of his training with his dad and uninterested in anything that wasn’t directly involved with that. He was starting to wish he’d paid more attention though, from the way Dave was looking at him.

“If you’re going to be weird now, we’re going to have a problem,” Dave says, still watching him closely.

“I don’t have a problem with it!” John says defensively. “I just... don’t know a lot about it, and I feel bad, that’s all.”

Dave purses his lips and shrugs. “All you have to know is that I’m a dude,” he says.

John shoots him an incredulous look. “When was that in question?” he asks genuinely, and Dave looks pleased.

“Never,” he says fiercely, and John likes the look of pride and determination that spreads across his face.

“Are you hungry?” John asks, moving on.

“Basically always,” Dave laughs, wriggling into sitting upright.

John considers that. “Have you tried drinking animal blood?” he asks, still curious about vampire biology.

Dave’s face screws up. “Can’t. Apparently it makes us violently sick,” he says.

“What’s the difference?” John laughs, and Dave shoots him another look. “Sorry, I guess you don’t know that either.”

“C’mon, hurry up,” Dave huffs, scooting over to sit next to John. He rolls his eyes, and holds out his arm, feeling around for a juice box with the other. “Dude, hold still,” Dave complains, cold hands gripping just above his elbow, trying to hold him still. John finds what he wanted and laughs, shoving Dave lightly.

“Just eat, crabby-pants. You’re not you when you’re hungry.”

Now that John was used to it, the pinch of the initial bite wasn’t so bad. It felt lie a particularly large needle, pricking him for no more than a couple of seconds. When he wasn’t fighting it every second, or trying to hold back his disgust, it was actually... kind of nice. Whatever made up vampire saliva numbed the pain and flushed him with a spike of endorphins that made him relax into it. Because Dave wasn’t having to fight him every step or trying to suck as quickly as possible, he let the effect take hold, John always finding himself sighing in disappointment once it was over.

“That’s how it’s usually done, you know,” Dave says after John finishes his juice box.

“Hm?” he asks, the pleasant sleepiness of post-feeding time washing over him.

“Drinking. Usually you let the venom do it’s thing before you bite. Then it feels good,” Dave says trying to restrain his bubbling happiness. “Apparently ancient vampires in Greece had concubines who were basically blood bags. They’d be into the whole biting thing, so the vampires had willing donors.” John had quickly noticed how much Dave liked to talk after a feeding, and it only seemed to be more quick and open now that they were officially friends. “And I remember one of the oldbloods was telling me about this clinic she’d set up in London, a few hundred years ago, where she’d experimented with trying to give melancholy people a little happiness, by biting their finger. It had this dual effect of being pretty nice-feeling and also a placebo, where she told them that the herbs she put on repelled evil spirits, and that the holes she made were from leeches and that they let out the bad energy. She didn’t say whether it worked, but it sounds neat, and—”

On and on he went, John half-smiling, listening to him talk. The musical cadence of his voice, the accent that slipped through occasionally when he wasn’t paying attention, the excitement of his words— it all helped lull John into a warm, sleepy embrace. His dreams played out like a series of short films, taking aspects of Dave’s words and mashing them together to make surreal stories of vampires and doctors and emperors, all mixing together.

He slept well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it feels like these chapters are too short, but i can never think of anything else to flesh them out with!!!  
feel free to let me know if you’d rather these shorter chapters more frequently or longer ones less often, i’m genuinely curious.  
also: just a heads up that some of those tags about abuse will start becoming relevant soon, so just be aware of those. we’re almost to the half-way point though!! go us!!!


	9. The Ditch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dave has a not-so-great time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> woo! one of the longest chapters yet. tw for violence, probably the worst in the story so far and a couple of flashbacks!

The day is hot when John finally wakes up. It fills Dave with energy, but he can see that John feels stifled by it, sweaty and grumpy as they get ready to leave. Their next stop was Salt Lake City, where John says there’s a secretive hunter paradise, hidden by wards and trees and filled with everything a hunter might need. Dave will have to be kept out of sight more than usual, probably left in a hotel room or the truck while John goes to get supplies.

“It’s full of supernatural too,” John says and Dave looks up. “Some supernatural are just... more welcome than others.”

Dave’s ears flick with interest, and he sees John smile. Dave knew there were other creatures out there, but he’d never met any before. He’d spent most his vampire life either locked away with his clan or on the run from John. The closest he’d been to another creature like him aside from vampires was the whiff of werewolf he’d gotten in California. “What kinds of things are there?” he asks innocently, trying to sate his curiosity.

“Witches, mostly,” John says. “They pass as human most of the time, unless you know what to look for, and they’re generally neutral when it comes to conflict.” John thinks for a while, and Dave waits with bated breath for more. “There’s usually a few werewolves, especially before spring. They’re a mating ground nearby, so they like to meet up in town and catch up, I think. Fae too, occasionally, though they’re not as welcome I guess. Mostly they’re there to trade with other fae or the occasional half-fae who can trade with humans.”

“Full-fae can’t?”

John hums. “Fae laws are pretty complicated, so we generally try to avoid making any kind of deals or trades with them, in case it ends up being a trick. You can’t really tell apart the naughty and nice fairies, so to speak. Half-fae and the briseadh geallaidh can’t enforce the laws, so it’s safe to trade with them.”

“The-bish-zuh-what?”

“The briseadh geallaidh,” John repeats. “I don’t know if I’m saying it right either,” he says with a laugh. “It’s fae for oath breaker, or something like it,” he explains. “When a fae breaks a law, they get cast out to live with humans, because the theory is that they’re the only ones who will have them. There’s some of them around, but I’ve never met with any.”

“What else is there?” Dave says, unable to hide his eagerness. John grins in the mirror and Dave copies the look out of excitement.

“Psychics, usually. Humans who can tell the future, or know things they shouldn’t. Basically anyone who is a human with magical abilities can be found there. Supernatural beings who aren’t human at all or involve, you know, a transformation from human... they’re less common. Werewolves are the main exception, seeing as they’re pretty friendly and co-operative for the most part. Hunters hire them to find other magical creatures, or send messages sometimes.”

Dave was only half-interested in hearing more about werewolves. “Do dragons exist?” he asks excitedly. “What about like, elves and orcs and stuff?”

John snorts. “Not that I know of. I know there are giants, but they don’t come out of the mountains often for obvious reasons.” He thinks some more. “I met a harpy once. She tried to claw my face off for telling a lie, though, so I’m not a huge fan.”

“What else?” Dave pushes.

“Why are you so into this?” John laughs.

Dave feels that prickling warmth that John has confirmed was indeed a blush. “I don’t know, it’s comforting I guess. Knowing that it isn’t just me and a bunch of shitty vampires,” he says, looking down at his lap, at his forgotten comic. He’d been in the middle of scribbling stupid doodles over all the character’s faces when John had gotten his attention.

John smiles, and thankfully doesn’t tease him. “Witches are as common as dirt, you know. They’re basically everywhere. There’s usually one or two with almost any supernatural town or camp or whatever. People keep them on retainer to cast wards and protection charms and all that. My dad used to keep in touch with one,” he says, and Dave can see that the mention of his dad pains him.

“Where is she now?” he asks. John looks uncomfortable, eyes glued to the road.

“I don’t know,” he says, and Dave is sure he’s lying.

“Did she..?” Dave asks, knowing this was dangerous water. Anger flashes across John’s face in response.

“I thought we agreed not to mention my dad anymore,” he says tense.

“You brought it up,” Dave shoots back, tearing his eyes away and staring out the window instead. “I was just making conversation.”

“Yeah, well you mentioned your mom first,” John snaps, and Dave can see the white of his knuckles, hear the speeding thunk of his heart.

“Low blow, dude,” Dave says, voice strained.

“Let’s just focus on what we need to do,” John says, and Dave jerks to look at him.

“We?”

Doubt flickers over John’s face. “Killing the Striders,” he says plainly.

Then it was Dave’s turn to snap. “What do you mean, we? And what do you mean Striders? I thought you just wanted to kill Bro,” Dave says, but he knows when he says it that that had been an assumption. After talking about the youngbloods and about all these other magical beings that John seemed to find so normal, Dave had just thought he’d be more considerate, more compassionate. “Are you seriously still trying to kill them all?”

“I’m not going to kill the kids,” John says. “But the rest of them can die.”

Dave is flabbergasted. “What was all that about being afraid to kill them? About how they’re still human?” John’s eyes meet his only briefly.

“I said you were human,” John says, and Dave’s anger rises.

“They’re not all evil, dude,” he says. “They’re there because Bro’s keeping them there. They’re not responsible for the evil shit he’s done.”

“I know that!” John exclaims. “But I don’t have a choice. I have to stop them, stop the clan from killing more hundreds of people. How am I supposed to weed out the people who will avenge their creator and the people who won’t? How am I supposed to find the humans?”

Dave bristles. “That doesn’t mean—“

“I have to do this,” John says, cutting Dave off decisively.

“Do you want to die? Is that what this is?” Dave yells, clutching the pen so hard it snaps. “You want to die and take them all down with you?”

“If that’s what it takes.”

Dave can’t help the sharp laugh. “I would kill to be human again, and you’re just tossing it away like it doesn’t even matter.”

That gets an immediate rise out of John. “You think I care about your fucking opinion on the matter?” The sound John makes sounds almost like a growl, and Dave’s own chest rumbles with an instinctual response.

“My opinion fucking matters!” Dave yells back. “You have the chance to go back to a normal life, I don’t! But you obviously don’t give two shits if I live or die. You still think I’m less than you. You’re no better than me, John,” he fumes.

“Your clan has killed people! Hundred and hundreds of people mangled and murdered or turned into you, and you think I have to wait until they hurt me personally to do something? You think I should wait until they come out of the shadows and apologise? Are you stupid? I’m a hunter! I hunt vampires! It’s what I do!” He’s shaking, his voice rising to try and dwarf Dave’s, but Dave only grows louder in response, already feeling hoarse from yelling with him. At him. Against him.

“You’re going to throw your life away over something like this? All because you have daddy issues? Well guess what, John! He’s dead!” Dave’s rage boils over. He’s seething, barely able to stop himself from kicking and screaming like a child.

“Look who’s fucking talking?” John says with a hideous laugh. “Fucking ‘Bro’?” Dave shudders like he’s been slapped, but John doesn’t stop. “I bet you miss your family real fucking bad, huh?”

“He’s not my—“

“I bet they’re not even looking for you—“ John says, and Dave’s heart drops.

“It’s your kind that did this to me!” he screams, tears prickling his eyes, and he can see John crying too. “Bro never wouldn’t made me if he didn’t think you disgusting hunters were a threat! I hate you, I hate your kind, and I hate your fucking Dad!” He kicks the door, denting the plastic with the force of it. “It’s your fault, you did this!” His voice gives out from screaming, and he almost hopes they crash.

His family loved him. They loved him. They missed him. They loved him.

“It’s your fault, if you and your fucking friends had left us alone, he wouldn’t have made us, he wouldn’t need an army of children. You did this!”

The car comes to a sudden halt. He goes to kick the door again, only for it to swing away, his feet hitting empty air. John looms over him, and Dave only has enough time to register the crushing grief on his face before he’s being grabbed by the ankles and dragged out of the car. His head hits the ground and John drags him a few feet, then drops him. Dave gets ready to grab him when he’s close, only to be kicked, tumbled, falling down the ditch on the side of the highway. He reaches the bottom, covered in dirt, cuts, sweat and tears. He screams wordlessly, unable to pull himself upright, or move much at all.

“Low blow,” is all John says before Dave hears his footsteps retreat.

He hears the truck driving away and sucks in a breath, letting out one last long scream. He screams until he runs out of breath then he screams some more. John’s words stung but he knew he’d cut just as hard. His heart aches with his rage, his sorrow, guilt.

He would die here. John was really leaving him to die. He may not have cut off his fangs, but no one would find him here. No one was looking for him. No one even knew he was missing. Everyone who cared thought he was dead already.

So he lies there, defeated, face pressed into the mud. He’s caked in it, shaking on the hard ground. Rocks dig into him and dust fills his mouth. He was going to die like how he did the first time. Alone, in the mud.

At first, Dave hopes John was coming back. he thinks John will turn the truck around and laugh saying It told you not to fight me’. Even that would be better than this. Lying on the ground, trying not to cry. All that time where he thought they were getting along, all that talk of being friends, all that meant nothing. He’d broken one of the only rules of their friendship, he knew that, but John had broken it right back, and worse. It doesn’t take long for him to realise John wasn’t coming back for him.

The longer he lies there, anger slowly fading, the cold setting in, the worse he feels. Without the fire of his anger at John, he just feels empty and sad, John’s harsh words ringing in his head. He wishes he’d just minded his words, he wishes that John had minded his. He wants to go back to the night before, where they’d been friends, proper, true friends. Maybe this was what he got for all those times he’d drunk John’s blood, beaten him to the ground and taunting him.

Everything hurts, aching and bruised. How long would it take him to starve, he wonders. The sun dips behind a distant tree, the sky starting to go dark, and still John doesn’t come. Soon, Dave has no energy to scream at passing cars, or to dig his fingers into the dirt to try and move himself, however little.

With nothing to eat and no sun to warm him, Dave’s strength quickly drains. He can barely move, unable to warm himself, and his energy slips away from him, much faster than it usually would. Something rises in his chest. He wants to say he’s sorry, to his mom, to Rose, to John, to the people he’s hurt. He doesn’t want to die, he doesn’t want to leave everything behind unsolved, unknown.

Gritting his teeth, Dave curls himself, trying to push his way onto his knees. They ache and creak under him, rocks and debris digging into his skin. “I don’t deserve to die,” he says to himself. “I’m still human.” It’s something to hold onto. He wasn’t going to let this kill him, not now. His knees crumple and he smacks his chin on a chunk of concrete, John’s blood splatting beneath him.

His vision swims, hot tears spilling down next to the last of John’s blood. What a mess he’d made of things. He wants to be mad at John, but really, he’s just exhausted. “I’m still human,” he says again, baring his fangs. Black spots spark in his eyes, and it feels much too soon. Not yet, he wants to say. I can keep going, not yet.

º

Ten years ago.

“Oh, quit your whining you big baby!”

“It’s not whining,” Dave scoffs, arms crossed tight over his chest. “I’m complaining with my dignity intact, at least.” Rose shoots him a flat look. “It’s not my fault, okay? I’ve never had to...” Dave trails off, looking down at his shoes.

“Dave,” his twin says, and euphoria pops in his chest like fireworks, all the way to his throat. He struggles to push down the grin, not wanting to undermine his reluctance to go inside. “I thought you’d be elated.”

“I am,” Dave says.

“So?”

“So?”

“So, let’s go then. Your dawdling will only make this all so much more painful. Doctors run on strict schedules, you know,” Rose says, holding up a finger and jabbing it at him.

“Schedules which they’re always behind in,” Dave laughs, finally uncrossing his arms. He snatches Rose’s accusing finger out of the air, winding his arm around her’s. “Fine, let’s go. Just to get you off my dick you bossy harpy,” he says, Rose only looking smug. “Let’s go kick this doctor’s ass.”

“Now that’s a terrible idea,” Rose says, leading him up the stairs towards the clinic. “Not when the medical professional you want to ass-kick is about to, hopefully, provide the astounding medical care that is available to us due to the wonders of modern medicine and our darling mother.”

The doors slide open, prompting them to lower their voices in the quiet lobby. “Thanks for pushing me, you know,” Dave says, looking around them cautiously. “To ask mom.”

“Of course, Dave. You’re a rather idiotic and stubborn man, you know, and you truly need pushing. Quite often in fact.” At that point, Rose was doing it on purpose. Those pops of happiness come back, once for his name, once for his gender. “Will you be keeping Dave, then?” she asks, spotting his dreamy expression.

“I think so,” he says, letting her see his smile. Rose’s smile matches his, and his heart jumps with happiness.

“Hah!” Someone exclaims, both twin’s expressions morphing into one of knowing anticipation. “What were you kiddies doing, huh?” Their mother cries, sweeping them into a crushing hug and drawing the eyes of several patients and staff. “I’ve been here for so—o long!”

Rose gives Dave a look that betrays her annoyance, Dave only grinning, too ecstatic to really complain about their zealous mother.

“Mom,” Dave says, pushing at her.

She releases them, hair a bit frazzled, coat a bit rumpled, her hands clasping in excitement that almost rivals Dave’s. “Yes my darling, sweet, impeccably handsome son?” she says, Dave flushing and grabbing her sleeve, trying to tug the gathering out of the curious eyes.

“You’re compensating, mother,” Rose says, grabbing her other sleeve, the two of them pulling her down the corridor she’d appeared from. “And it’s Dave, we think.”

“Dave! How wonderful,” she says, sounding dreamy. “How grown up. You sound like an accountant!”

“Is it too late to change it?” Dave says in disgust. Rose scowls and shoves their mom.

“Don’t! He’s already taken a erroneous amount of time to make a decision, don’t make this any more toilsome than it needs to be.”

“My little Dave,” mom says, ignoring Rose and staring at Dave. She puts her hands on either cheek, grinning from ear to ear. “How great it is to meet you.”

º

Five years and eight months ago.

The sound of laughter filled the car, cramped and stuffy as it was. Music played, but the rushing air through the cracked windows and the shouted conversations drowned it out until it was no more than a baseline rumble.

“What, never?” Someone asks.

“It just never seemed worth it...”

“To leave the city?” Everyone contributes to the chorus of disbelieving laughs and questions, Dave smiling but keeping his focus on the road. They weren’t that far out yet, but in a few hours time, they’d be relaxing in the luxury mansion of the vice president’s uncle. The entire yearbook group was doing one last outing before they had to buckle down and get ready for the end of the year— for some of them, their final year —approaching far too fast. Dave, with the only driver’s license in the whole club, had been roped into driving, along with another car driven by an older sister.

It wasn’t his favourite thing to do. Driving had always made Dave somewhat nervous, but for the sake of one last weekend away, he’d reluctantly given in to the pleading of the group.

The only other person who seemed just as content as him to sit in relative silence was the vice president herself. It was one of the many reasons they just seemed to get along slightly better than either of them did with anyone else. As vice president, she spent most of her time organising everyone else, the president making final decisions and everyone else contributing in their different ways. Dave, needing something to do after school while Rose was off quietly attending GSA meetings, (meetings that Dave was just a little too hesitant to attend) had decided on the yearbook club. They’d needed a photographer, and he figured he could use the club to get extra credit in his photography classes. It was a win-win.

Aradia looks to be asleep, face turned away but Dave knows better. Though she exuded an aura of quiet stillness, she seemed to be constantly thinking, considering something.

Dave settles into the rhythms of driving, letting the rest of the group’s noise and antics fall away. The clunk of shifting gears, the resistance of the pedals beneath his feet, the rush of air through the car as he speeds down the highway. If he let everything else fall away, if he focused completely on the road, it all didn’t seem to bad.

Beside him in the passenger seat, Aradia stirs. She sits up, and Dave can see her slowly looking around. He wondered if she had been asleep after all.

“Dave?” she says, and he flicks her eyes toward her once to show he was listening. “Change lanes.” Confused, but trusting her, knowing she knew the way, he does so. He glances at her again, inexplicable anxiety swirling in his stomach. The others had calmed down, but it somehow made the air more tense, rather than relaxed. Why did he feel like something was happening?

The unease doesn’t leave him, even as Aradia relaxes back in her seat, eyes drifting over the landscape flying past. Something about the mildly concerned expression on Aradia’s face had put him on edge. She hadn’t indicated anything might be wrong, but Dave had felt it in the tone of her voice, even quieter than normal.

The further out they go, the less cars they see, the sun beginning to set. Dave knows he could be going faster, already going slower than he needed to, but his nervous inexperience around driving and his strange sense that something wasn’t right stopped him from upping the speed. In front of him, the other car starts pulling away. Dave flicks on his headlights and continues onwards, not worried about losing them, more worried about why he was so twitchy.

Sky dark, Aradia finally shifts again. “Something is wrong,” she says, and Dave looks at her sharply.

“Aradia?”

The last thing he sees is her head, haloed by shattered glass, glittering in the moonlight as she’s thrown into the passenger door. Blood glints, floating around her like they were caught in time. She doesn’t move, or resist, nothing registers in her eyes at all, and Dave wonders numbly if she’s already dead, marvelling at how quick it had all been.

The car flips, sending the glass flying, swirling around the occupants like snow, little chips of ice showering them with stinging kisses. The car hits the barrier and Dave is thrown the other way, registering that his head was pinned, looking at his dead friend, by the airbag. Suspended by the angle of the car, crushed between a dented door, his seatbelt and the airbag, all he can do is watch as her blood pools beneath her. He wonders if it hurt.

Night air rushes into the car, filling it like a vacuum as the driver’s door is peeled away from the car, revealing the teenage passengers lined up like sardines, ready to swallow. His side throbs once, then begins to scream in pain and he yells. Just outside his vision, he sees his friends being dragged out, each bloodier and more broken than the last. A hand curls around the window frame above Aradia’s head, lifting the car and bowling fresh waves of agony through Dave’s body. The hand twists in her hair and tugs once, twice, until there’s a sickening crunching, and she’s being dragged through the window and out onto the road.

The airbag deflates, his body sagging more and more as the pressure it had put on him hisses away. Glass tinkles around him, and it’s all he can hear. All his eyes will focus on is the pretty pinpricks of light falling from his hair, from the seat, his clothes, the car his mom brought him for his seventeenth birthday.

The seatbelt is sliced away, but he doesn’t fall, lifted from the car by something cold and hard. As he lies on the tarmac and looks up at the stars, it dawns on him that he’s dying. His pain is gone as soon as it had arrived, and the arm that had been nearest the door looked more like roadkill than a limb. Someone looms over him, several someones, and he feels the need to apologise. Sorry you tried to save us, but it looks like we’re already dead!

The man’s mouth is moving, and Dave smiles the smile of someone who doesn’t know what you’re saying but doesn’t want to ask you to repeat yourself. Then the man is crouching, holding his arm, the one that still might be considered one, and examines it. How are my eyes still open? Dave wonders. When he tries to close them, thinking that might help him die faster, they feel like sandpaper against his lids.

Sorry about the car, mom.

A tiny spark starts in his forearm, then, like a flame on fuel, licks light-fast up his arm and to his chest and Dave arches off the ground and screams. Finding the fire inside him enough to make himself move, he rips his arm away from the man, and he sees his flesh tearing, caught in the man’s mouth. He tries to get away, but he’s being held down, and the pain becomes too intense to even process.

Something hot and wet splashes over him and he fights, fights to get away until he can’t anymore.

As he bleeds out and dies, he thinks to himself that his last words would be Aradia.

º

Something is wrong. Dave’s first thought upon coming back to himself. There was something strange. It doesn’t take long— what’s wrong is obvious. He was waking up. When his energy had left him, he’d passed out. He was detachededly surprised, like it was happening to someone else, as though he was just finding out an interesting fact. Oh, so vampires can pass out, how interesting.

His mouth feels strange and sticky, his tongue darting out on instinct, trying to lick his lips. It was like someone flicking the stovetop on in his chest. His eyes snap open and his senses flood back to him. There was blood on his face, dripping over his lips and down his chin, hot and fresh and enough to make his thirst consume him. His hands grab blindly for the source, bringing it closer as he desperately tries to drink as much as possible.

Each heart beat brings more blood, more of his senses. He slowly regains awareness as he drinks.

“I’m so fucking sorry,” says a far away voice. John, of course. As that registers, he forces himself to slow down, to take a breath, and tearing himself away from John’s blood takes physical force. He pulls back, finding himself slipping on blood, and mud, and soap. He’s in a bathtub in one of John’s patently awful motel rooms. It looks nicer than their usual one, but Dave’s can’t tell with all the dirt and blood that covered the floor, the bath, the sink, even the door had suffered.

John leans heavily against the side of the bath, Dave inside of it. There’s a slice along his arm, Dave’s own teethmarks around it, having bitten down instinctually upon tasting him.

Though foggy, Dave tries to take stock of himself. His mouth tastes awful, a combination of dirt and blood coating his tongue. He feels stiff and he’s covered in grime. John looks no better, equally filthy, tears mixing with the dust to make muddy tracks on his cheeks that only make it worse.

“You came back,” Dave says, his voice painfully hoarse. Instantly, John responds, surging forwards and pulling Dave bodily into his chest. His body shudders as he sobs, Dave’s own eyes welling up as he clutches at the back of John’s shirt.

“I’m sorry,” he says wetly. “I do care Dave, I do, I’m sorry— I fucked up, I was wrong, no, more than that,” he pulls back, still crying. “I was awful. I was an asshole, I...” He puts his hands on Dave’s cheeks, and Dave can see his distress in them. After a moment, he lets go, and Dave can see his hands shaking. He sits back and hangs his head, rubbing at his eyes.

It’s only then Dave notices how free his movement is, how unburdened he feels, and he knows that his bonds have been cut.

There’s a patient moment where John wipes at his eyes and shakes his head. John takes in a steadying breath, seeming to compose himself, looking back to Dave with a sad expression. They look at each other, Dave unsure how he should feel. On the one hand, he was grateful John came back. On the other hand, John was the reason he was in there in the first place. On yet another hand, their fight hadn’t been entirely John’s fault. But on an inexplicable fourth hand, his reaction had been somewhat extreme.

John gives him a look that Dave knows means he’s going through the same thing. He looks conflicted, and hesitant, raising his hand as if to touch Dave, pulling it back before he can. Dave decides to let John make the first move, for him to set the expectations. It didn’t matter what he thought right now, only that he recovered enough to have that conversation later.

“You don’t have to forgive me,” John says quietly, and Dave looks down. “I wouldn’t... I wouldn’t ask that of you. I was— I can’t... I was so horrible, and...” John groans in frustration, head in his hands. “I fucked up so badly, I hurt you, I never wanted to do that, I swear, I was...” Dave’s fingers dig into the flesh of his arms, tears welling in his eyes.

“Don’t,” he croaks. “I can’t do this right now.” John nods, obviously miserable. “All I want... All I want is a shower.” John nods again, biting his lip.

With his help, Dave strips off his clothes, leaving his boxers. His arms and legs creaked in protest when he lifted them too high, stretched them too far, stiff from the days of being idle.

Never one to be good at dealing with conflict, Dave isn’t sure what to do. he slides back against one end of the bath while John starts the shower, both of them avoiding looking at each other. Cold water hits Dave’s feet and he curls his toes, waiting for it to warm. He still feels far away and discombobulated, unable to think seriously about the events of the last few hours. He knew he was pissed off at John, somewhere in his mind, but the relief and sadness that had consumed him upon waking up in safety with him was overriding any thoughts about his anger— at least for the moment. He’s more numb than anything.

Logically, in his detached state, he can look at his emotions and identify them, weigh them in his palms. His anger, his relief, his confusion, his sadness, his joy. Somehow they’re all there, all vying for Dave to react, to say something, to do something. To hit John, to hug him, to forgive him, to curse him out, anything. His body vibrates with the need to just react, but he can’t do any of it.

The absurdity of it all makes him choke out a half-laugh half-sob, pulling his knees up and wrapping his arms around them protectively. John’s shoulders shake as much as his hands as he fiddles with the knobs, obviously trying to stay busy so he doesn’t look at Dave any more than he has to.

Finally, John sits back, head hanging.

“John,” Dave says, unwinding his arms. John looks at him cautiously. “I’m going to slap you,” he says, and John nods, looking just as miserable as Dave felt. “But then I’m going to hug you, okay?”

There’s a long silence where John looks uncomfortable.

“I don’t—“

“It’s what I want,” Dave says, feeling a flicker in his chest, some of his numbness fading. “We have so much to talk about but I’m gross and you’re tired and... things are just weird, okay?”

They sit and look at each other, the sounds of the water rushing into the bath surrounding Dave, matching the static he felt in his head. “Yeah, okay.” John says, shaking his head. “You deserve that much. Just...” he looks at Dave, hesitantly holding out a hand, letting it over in the air, like he wasn’t sure what he even moved it for. “Just make sure you hit me hard.”

That was easy for Dave to agree with. He grabs John’s hand, still held awkwardly in the air with no purpose, and pulls him closer. Without bothering to warn him, Dave slaps John hard across the face. His head snaps to the side and his chest heaves like it was releasing a pressure. Dave’s hand stings and shakes and he isn’t sure if he feels any better about anything.

“I’m so sorry,” John chokes out, and Dave yanks him forward into a hug. The lip of the bath digs into him and his back aches from the angle, but Dave doesn’t care, crushing John as hard as he can without hurting him, keeping him against his chest.

“We have to talk about it,” Dave says, John nodding. “But we’re going to talk about it tomorrow. Get in, you’re gross too.”

John strips to his underwear and gets in with Dave, facing him, and Dave can see just how tired he looks. He’s covered in bruises, and cuts, blood under his fingernails and still dripping slowly from the cut on his arm.

He switches to the shower head and warm water flows over both of them. They don’t move much, just letting the spray take the worst of the grime from their bodies in silence. Rusty brown water swirls down the drain, bits of grit and leaves and grass caught in the whirl.

“I’m mad at you,” Dave says, looking at his knees.

“I know.”

“Don’t go.”

“I won’t,” John says, voice hot with tears and anger. Dave looks up at him. He’s mirrored Dave, arms around his knees, but he’s looking at him, rather than down. Blood and water mix and run down his legs.

“Give me your arm,” Dave says, gentler than before. John scoots forward carefully, holding out his arm. He balls his fist and tenses, fresh blood pushed out through the spots where it had started to clot. “Stop that,” Dave grunts, reaching up and uncurling his fist with his fingers. “You’ve lost enough tonight.” Dave licks his own palm, sliding his fingers over the wound. He has to do it a few times before the cut clots and the bleeding stops, but no way Dave was putting his tongue on a wound that filthy.

“Why?” John mumbles, but Dave doesn’t know what he’s asking.

“You’re still my friend, even if you’re a shitty one.” John flinches, and Dave drops his arm and shrugs. “I think...” he starts, unsure what he wanted to say. “I think you fucked up. But everything is fucked up.”

They don’t talk much after that. They pass the hotel soap between them and attempt to scrub the worst from their bodies. Dave is in a much worse state. Between being in the same clothes, unable to clean, for days on end, on top of being thrown in a disgusting ditch on the side of the road, he’s caked in filth. He scrubs and scrubs until his skin feels stripped clean. When they take off their boxers, they sit back to back, barely touching as they clean in silence.

Eventually, John shuts off the shower. Dave’s throat still ached and his skin felt raw a sore, but the steam had soothed it and the water had eased it. He felt warm and pliant, something he hadn’t felt for a good long while, and certainly never around a human. For a while, he doesn’t want to move. His legs ache and it’s been a hot minute since he stood on his own two feet. But soon the steam starts clearing and the room grows colder, goosebumps rising along his arms and back, the shaking returning.

John stands, Dave too unsure to follow suit. “Wait here,” John says, voice gentle.

“John,” Dave immediately, looking over his shoulder. John steps out of the bath, looking at him. Words stick in his throat and Dave doesn’t even know why he said anything. It had come out, when he imagined John leaving, a strangled noise of sudden uncertainty. John’s face crumples a little, and Dave thinks maybe he understands. “I’m coming back,” he says, crouching back down and putting a hesitant hand on his shoulder. “I wouldn’t...”

“Okay,” Dave says, turning away. “Come back.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yikes this was hard to write tbh


	10. Monsters & Humans

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John finds a monster.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> its late, i’m sorry, but writing these weird morally heavy scenes is hard (whodvethunk)

There’s a point, John’s heard, where someone can get so angry that they go from frothing, angry rage to cold, calculating, piercing anger. It had taken him over as he’d pushed Dave away and down the slope, and it was still here as he got into the car and started the engine. As he’s driving away, that’s all he feels. Cold, and numb, and distantly furious. Of course he and Dave hated each other, that wasn’t surprising. Why should he be shocked it had turned out like this? He can’t go on like this, there’s no way he’d be able to function with Dave in the back, screaming at him about his issues, poking and prodding at that unhealed, always opening wound about his father.

John can feel his back bruising from the desperate kicking Dave had made, grounding him. He... He really did that. Dave wasn’t in the truck with him anymore. It’s quiet, as quiet as it’d been the first night John drove it after his Dad had died.

This was what he wanted. He wanted to be rid of him. Right? John didn’t know what he wanted. His vision turns fuzzy and unclear and he swerves off the highway onto the closest exit, desperate to get away from it in case he hurts himself, or, God forbid, someone else. He pulls over on the first curb, his whole body shaking. He slams his fists on the wheel and screams. He knows he’s crying, he knows and he doesn’t try and stop it. They roll down his cheeks, his chin, they wet his shirt and his pants and he doesn’t try to wipe them away, to stop them from flowing.

Unable to just sit and think about what just happened, watch it play over and over in his head, he throws open the truck door and steps out into the cooling light. He’s parked haphazardly, bad enough to get a ticket. Usually, he’d be more concerned about that, but he’s consumed by his need to get away from the truck, fleeing from it, from the memories associated it. His dad’s ghost sits next to the phantom of Dave in the back seat, judging him as he runs from what he’s done.

It’s cold out, and John doesn’t even know where he is. Some small town, big enough for chain stores, too small for more than one supermarket, it’s not the kind of place he would usually go to, but everything the last few weeks had been unusual. Hands stuffed in his coat and head down, he walks. He barely passes anyone, and for that, he’s grateful. It was bad enough that he was witness to this, let alone anyone else seeing him in the state he’s in. Though he isn’t crying anymore, his face feels hot and swollen, like the tears were just waiting for an excuse to come out.

What was the point of everything? All that he and Dave had been through in such a short amount of time. In those month’s they’d spent fighting, it had always seemed a little like neither of them had their hearts in it. John would find Dave, never far from where he’d been before, they’d fight, and John would let him drink. If either of them had wanted to, they could’ve ended things much faster. John could have gotten help, cornered Dave, trapped him and killed him easily. Dave could have run much further than he had been. He never went more than a few towns over, blazing a slow jagged path through the state that was never too difficult to follow.

When Dave had come with him, when John had kidnapped him, it had taken all of a few hours for John to feel the pang of guilt rising in his throat. Dave acted so inexplicably human, so charming and funny and somehow nice despite everything. Even when he was an asshole, it was so human. So full of genuine emotion and sincerity at times. What had John done?

He walks along a main road, the shopfronts coming to life around him. The sky was getting dark, and Dave must be getting cold. John shudders and wraps his arms around himself. Bars and restaurants begin to glow, filling up with customers. Other shops bustle with the last-minute rush of closing time, streetlights flicker, and the pedestrians around him trail dragons breath, marching along. Going home, going to work, going out, heading in. Meeting friends and living their lives. John should be with Dave right now. John didn’t deserve to be with Dave right now.

A convenience store is still open, John numbly going inside to escape the cold reality and his thoughts.

Mindless, he grabs something from a shelf and gestures vaguely at the cigarettes on the back wall, throwing a cheap lighter down too. The clerk tries to make conversation, but John just slides over a handful of bills and leaves without the change. What was he doing? He shakes a smoke from the pack and lights it, raising a shaking hand to his lips.

“Fuck,” he hisses, pinching the bridge of his nose. He’d pulled a bag of Twizzlers off the shelf.

º

Six years ago.

John’s pencil scratches against the paper as he furiously scribbles out the answers, hand cramping with effort. “Time?” he says, shoving his glasses hard up his nose, face almost pressed to the desk.

“Five minutes, son,” his dad says, and John hears the crinkle of the morning paper as he turns a page.

Q33: WHAT IS ONE FUNDAMENTAL AND ONE INCIDENTAL PROPERTY OF WOLFSBANE?

A: werewolf poison, repellant.

Q34: NAME AT LEAST ONE INGREDIENT USED TO ALTER THE PROPERTIES OF WOLFSBANE AND AT LEAST ONE PREPARATION METHOD.

A: a mixture of wolfsbane, ginger and dried monkshood steeped in hot water overnight can inhibit transformation if drunk within thirty minutes of infection.

Q35: CIRCLE THE CORRECT ANSWER. HOW PROUD OF YOU AM I?

DISAPPOINTED SLIGHTLY DISAPPOINTED NEUTRAL SLIGHTLY PROUD VERY PROUD

John looks up from his paper to where his father is seated across from him. “Dad, stop giving me free questions!”

“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean, son,” his dad says, turning the page again. “I don’t at all condone making things easy for my students.”

“Dad!”

“I would never leave you astray like that, son.”

Face red, John circles ‘VERY PROUD’ and puts his pencil down. “Done,” he mumbles, slumping down in his seat. The paper folds down and John meets his dad’s eye, only partially obscured by the haze of smoke from his pipe.

“You aren’t going to read it over once more?”

John huffs and slouches back over the stack of printer paper, scanning through his answers in the last of the allotted time. When his dad finally folds his paper and tells him time’s up, he heaves a sigh of annoyance and relief. “Is that the last one?” he whines, taking off his glasses and rubbing his eyes.

“For today,” Dad says distractedly, licking a finger to leaf through John’s home-made answer booklet.

“Dad you should just let me type my answers and save some paper.”

“Now son,” he says, and John slides down further in his seat, anticipating another lecture. “Half of the job is about tactile response. If I just let you tack-y-tack-tack-tack away on a keyboard, what kind of father would I be? If I let you look things up on the web, that would defeat the purpose!”

John throws his hands up and shakes his head. “You can unplug the ethernet cable, dad!”

“Writing things out is the best way to learn,” dad insists. He puts the stack of paper aside for a moment, folding his hands on the table and leaning forwards. “Now son, let’s go over this morning’s lecture. Give me a summary of what you took away.”

John reluctantly pushes himself upright again and nods. In all honesty, he enjoyed his dad’s homeschooling much more than his regular schooling during the week. In just a few months, he’d be 17, and his dad would let him drop out of high school to do hunter training full time. It made excitement bubble in his stomach.

He goes through the motions of summarising that morning’s lesson on vampire clan structures, only stumbling on a few details.

“Very good,” his dad says with a smile. “I’m very proud of you son, you’re learning so fast.”

Even though John was embarrassed by his dad’s constant love and approval, he knew it was something he was lucky to have. “Thanks, dad,” he says, and he’s strangely genuine. His dad may spend all week away, often coming back half-dead with one of his friends, or alone for John to patch up, and he may not know a thing about what was going on in John’s life, but he loved him, and was doing something good for the world.

Johnathon Sr. was a man with a lot of secrets, a lot of walls up, but he loved his son, and John’s only wish was to be worthy of that pride.

“This afternoon we’ll go over your test results and we’ll talk about some of the advanced and obscure uses of wolfsbane. Tomorrow we’ll start moving on to the rare creatures section, starting with succubi.” John can’t help but giggle at that. He sure knew what those were. His dad’s face goes hard and John freezes. “John, no matter what the creature is like in pop culture, you have to remember that these things are no fun and games. They’re monsters. They will kill you without a second thought, and it will be brutal, and it will be painful. If you’re going to do this, you have to take it seriously.”

John sat up straighter in his seat and nodded sheepishly. “Sorry sir,” he said quietly.

“Good. You have fifteen for lunch,” he says, picking up his PDA in clear dismissal. John scurries out of his dad’s office and up to his bedroom, letting out a sigh of relief.

On John’s bedside table was a stack of papers, similar quizzes he’d taken over the last few weeks. Buried at the bottom of the pile was the lesson plan for the year. Right down the bottom, circled in red, was the day John was waiting for.

PRACTICAL TEST

A) ALCHEMY & PREP

B) TRACKING & TRAPPING

C) HUNTING & EXECUTION

The day he got to go out with his dad and his division and hunt a real life supernatural. After John had excitedly asked him again and again, his dad had finally disclosed that he’d be tagging along with a big mission that he and his team had been planning for months. It was going to be all hands on deck, and a bunch of recent additions, including himself, would be coming to help. If he got to that point, that was.

He sits on the bed with an exhausted sigh. As excited as he was for the practical elements, this year had been nothing but theory and history. His first year of part-time training had been mostly brewing and experimenting, and it had all seemed so fun! Now it was just tiring, and hard. Harder than John thought it would have been.

He berates himself. Of course it would be hard! He saw how his dad sometimes came home, saw the way he would stumble in drunk when a team mate died, how he sat on the porch for hours, smoking his pipe and pouring over books John had only just begun to understand. It was never going to be easy, and he’d been a fool for thinking so.

Standing, John puts the paper back and goes to his desk. Sitting on it was a worn-out journal that was given to him on his sixteenth birthday, the birthday he’d finally been allowed to start his training proper. It was a copy of an old journal, passed down through the family from father to son, parent to child. It contained all sorts of outdated information, but it was valuable nonetheless. It helped John feel like he was part of something bigger than just him and his dad. A community of people that was ridding the world of evil, making the planet a better place for normal people like them.

He runs his hand over the cover and smiles. He wouldn’t let his dad down.

º

The golden arches of the McDonald’s sign were a beacon in the night. They pull John closer, making his way down the street and into the parking lot. The smokes hadn’t helped. In fact, he just felt worse. He thought of his dad, his pipe on the porch, the tins of tobacco he’d left behind when... It was only after his dad was gone, leaving it all unsmoked, that John had even tried to smoke anything. It hadn’t helped then and it wasn’t helping now. Why had he thought this was a good idea? He dumps the carton and the lighter in the closest trash can, shoving his hands back in his pocket and heading inside.

It was quiet, only a few people inside, John feeling like he was by far the oldest. Aside from a couple of teenagers with backpacks and ice creams, the only other patrons was a drunken student in a college sweater, sleeping in a booth, clearly passed out.

His hands shook again as he found a table, sitting down and putting his head in his hands. What was he doing?

He couldn’t just keep freaking out. Either he was going to accept what he did and move on, or he was going to be stuck in this place until he died. Unable to hold it back anymore, tears spring to his eyes.

“Fuck,” he says, taking off his glasses, wiping at the tears caught on the lenses. “Fuck, fuck, what am I doing?” he hisses to himself. Frustrated as the tears smear across the glass, he throws them down and puts his face back in his hands.

“Sir?” a wobbling voice says, and John looks up, quickly wiping tears from his eyes. It’s a teenage employee, standing with a spray bottle and a cloth in her hands. She’s looking at him nervously, shifting in place.

“Sorry,” John says instinctually, fumbling to put his glasses back on. “I’ll buy something...”

“It’s okay,” she says, fidgeting. “Are you allergic to anything?”

John is taken by surprise. “What? Uh, peanuts,” he says, frowning in confusion. The teenager looks over her shoulder and shakes her head, and someone else comes around the counter. It’s a manager, and John starts to stand, still confused.

“I’m sorry, I’ll—“

“Here,” the manager says, handing him a bag, heavy with food. Before John can give it back she steps away. “We’ll have to throw it away if you don’t eat it, and you look like you need it.” The kindness startles the tears out of him and he hovers, half-standing, half-sitting as the manager walks back to the counter. The teenager smiles at him softly.

“It’ll be okay, sir,” she says. John hiccups once and smiles back at her, warmth flooding his chest.

Before he can change his mind, he thanks the employees profusely and sprints from the restaurant. What the hell was he doing? He was supposed to have already had this revelation! Dave’s humanity didn’t leave him when his life was taken, it only grew stronger. He was more a person than John was. He hadn’t taken the power he’d had over others and used it to get what he want, or punish people who hurt his feelings. He’d just tried to live his life, to hurt as few people as possible, to get away from those who hurt him. All he’d done was prove to be a monster by hurting Dave just as bad as the vampires that had killed him in the first place.

He throws himself into the truck and slams the gas, swinging in a wide U-turn as he heads back onto the highway. He’s driving faster than he should, but he’d not thinking about that now. All he’s thinking about it the echoing cry of Dave’s screams, wondering how he could have possibly ignored them, turned his back on him. He doesn’t know whether he hopes Dave is still there or not.

It’s a wonder he actually finds the spot he’d left Dave with all his crying, screeching to a halt, not caring at all if anyone sees as he clamours out and yells. “Dave! Dave, where are you?” He desperately aims a flashlight down into the ditch. Realistically, John knows that he’s going to have to go down into the ditch. It’s unpleasant and gross and muddy and full of garbage, but John doesn’t care about that.

Dave is still there, which makes John feel both awful and horribly, painfully relieved. He lets out a sob, falling into the dirt and pulling Dave into his lap.

And God, he’s pale. Not the desaturated darkness of his usual skin tone, but actual paleness, lifelessness. He doesn’t respond and John starts to panic. Had he died? This quickly, was he dead? Had John killed him? Distress rises in his throat and he feels like he can’t breathe. Then, Dave’s eyes flicker behind his lids and his body twitches and John’s heart drops from his chest. He was alive. That was all that mattered.

“I’m sorry,” he chokes out, squeezing Dave close as he tries to find a sturdy way back up. “Fuck, I’m so sorry Dave.” His first priority is getting Dave out. In the end, he has to roll Dave, crawling behind him, the two of them thoroughly coated in fowl-smelling mud, and blood, and sweat, as well as John’s tears.

He haphazardly tosses some towels into the backseat before he puts Dave in, and then in a fit of anger at himself, he uses a pocket knife to slit the ropes— just one cut enough to diffuse the magic that had been stored within them, rendering them useless. He slices his arm, the sting harsh but John almost glad for it. He holds the wound over Dave’s face for a moment, trying to give him just a little bit of blood, anything to hold him over until they got somewhere safe.

It’s determination and a lot of muscle memory that gets him driving down the highway again, turning off an exit that promises a motel. he briefly remembers what he said to Dave about wifi and breakfasts, but when the motel only offers wifi he doesn’t care. He dusts himself off as well as possible, explaining to a concerned-looking receptionist that he’d been dirt-biking and just needed a shower, it was fine, his friend was in the truck resting because he’d taken a nasty fall.

The worker either can’t muster up the energy to care or isn’t paid enough to, because John gets a room key with minimal fuss, and silently thanks the heavens that this motel is truly a motel— he doesn’t have to carry Dave back past the man and risk him deciding to call the cops. He scoops Dave into his arms and carries him into the room, making a b-line for the bathtub with frantic energy.

Dave seemed to only be half-conscious, head lolled and eyes half-open. He barely responds when John goes back to trying to feed him blood, tongue lazily lapping at the blood, eyelashes fluttering.

“Mom?” Dave’s cracked voice croaks and John almost breaks down again. He’d been running on auto-pilot this whole time, he realises, ever since he’d started driving. He slumps forwards suddenly, exhaustion filling his form. He lets his wound drip over Dave, and he knows he wouldn’t care if he died here, trying to revive his friend.

It takes a long time, too long, before Dave seems to stir for real. Weak hands shoot up, grasping at John’s arm and pulling it close. He bites down, each one feeling more like a kitten-nip than the firm and sure bites he was used to from Dave. They still stung, but they felt like instinct, like Dave was just trying to eat him alive. He hisses and watches with almost horrified fascination as Dave begins to come alive again.

His skin darkens back to its usual colour, his eyes flicker open and his bites grow harder and more sure. When Dave seems almost fully awake again, the feeding slows down. John feels light-headed, but he doesn’t move. If he had to give all his blood for Dave to survive, he would lie down and die for him.

The next few minutes turn into a hazy blur. All he cares about is that Dave is alive, he didn’t fuck this up so bad that he killed someone, a person. He can still make amends, he can still make sure Dave is okay. He knows that they will probably never be friends again, but he has to make sure that Dave is alive, that he’ll be okay, that John hadn’t killed him. It’s all he can think about, on constant loop. It’s all he thinks about while he’s helping Dave, then when Dave slaps him, hugs him, gets him to join him in the bath. What finally pulls him out of it is Dave taking his arm.

Instead of drinking more, letting John pass out and bleed out in the tub, he gently stops the bleeding. He licks his fingers and spreads that unexplainable vampire saliva on the wound, John watching as it closes up.

Neither of them seem to know what the next step is, but John’s heart clenches painfully in relief. Dave was okay. He was so kind, and human and alive, and he was okay.

“Why?” he asks, disbelieving. Why are you still here? Why haven’t you killed me? Why are you so nice? He doesn’t know the specifics of what he’s asking, only that he doesn’t deserve it, whatever the answer is. The mere fact that Dave still considers him a friend, even a shitty one, is inconceivable to John. Without anything to say, they clean in silence.

Any sense of modesty is irrelevant in their situation, both of them too tired, too confused, too occupied to even think of being embarrassed. They sit naked in the tub, back-to-back, until John can’t take the cold anymore. Can’t take the presence of the person he hurt so much anymore.

John thinks Dave will be gone in the morning. He wouldn’t blame him, if John was in his situation, he would leave too. He wasn’t tied up, he would be full on blood, there was no reason for him to stay. It was selfish, but John wanted him to stay despite all that.

He stands, determined to make sure Dave was well-looked after, even if this was to be the last night they spent together.

“John,” Dave’s voice is panicked, and John looks over at him, frozen in place. He can see the terror in his eyes, the way he was reaching out without even noticing it. Instantly, he crouches back down, willing to do anything to make sure Dave never looked like that at him again, scared and unsure and hurt.

“I’m coming back,” he says, gently touching Dave’s shoulder. “I wouldn’t...”

“Okay,” Dave interrupts, turning away. “Come back.”

John wraps one of the thin motel towels around his waist and walks out to the truck. He grabs anything they may need for the night. The big fluffy robe he stole from a fancy motel once, the cold fast food, juice boxes, clothes... his first aid kit. He bundles it all up in some extra towels, hurrying inside. Just the few minutes outside had been enough for a chill to settle deep in his bones, and he didn’t want Dave to suffer the same.

Back in the bathroom, he opens the door to the sight of Dave trying to stand. His legs seem to be unable to hold his weight, and John watches in distress as Dave sinks back down into the tub. Dave looks more frustrated than upset, like he could possibly blame himself for how he’d ended up in this situation.

John rushes over, holding out his hands to Dave. He smiles weakly and takes them, letting himself be gently aided to his feet. John supports his weight, leading him to sit on the edge of the bath while he gets him a towel. He hands it to Dave, turning away modestly while he dried. “I...” he starts, unsure what he wanted to say.

“I’m not having this conversation naked,” Dave says, and he only sounds half-joking.

“Right,” John says, holding out the robe and offering it to Dave. When he turns back to him, Dave has slipped it on, the fluff dwarfing his thin frame and shorter height. He takes the offered boxers as well while John dresses himself.

On the bed, John carefully tends to Dave’s wounds. It was mostly covering them with bandages to stop them from stinging or reopening. Vampires don’t get infections, or bleed that much, so the care was mostly for comfort’s sake. They still don’t talk, and John is itching to. As much as he wanted to go on about how sorry he was, he wanted Dave to be comfortable. It left him in the position of desperately wanting to talk but biting his tongue and working in silence. each minute that they didn’t speak dragging on and on.

When John’s finished with Dave’s cuts, he pulls away. He’s stopped by a hold hand on his leg. Silently, without meeting his eye, Dave begins to dress John’s minor scrapes and cuts in return. He uses the full kit— cleaning them, using antiseptic, covering them with bandages.

“Where did you learn that?” he asks quietly, watching Dave work. Dave pauses, dropping his hands.

“My mom had an abusive boyfriend when we were kids,” he says, turning away and packing the kit back up. John reaches out and puts a hand on his.

“Dave...”

“You fucked up, John,” Dave says, and his voice is choked. “But I don’t... I can’t— Why don’t I hate you? You threw me in a ditch and yet...” Then he’s crying, and John cries too.

“I don’t know,” he says.

“I don’t either,” Dave says with a bitter laugh. “What does it say about my life that you can throw me out a car and it still doesn’t make me hate you?”

John’s stomach feels cold. He clenches his fists and bites hard at his lip. “I know I’m a horrible person—“

A laugh from Dave stops him. “But you’re not a horrible person. That’s the problem, isn’t it? That’s why I don’t hate you. Because you aren’t a horrible person. I don’t even want to hate you— I don’t know. I don’t think I do. I want to move on from it, I want to just be friends with you and forget this happened, but I can’t. How can I forget this, John?” John shakes his head. “I don’t know either. Slapping you didn’t make me feel better. Hugging you did, but then I felt bad for it making me feel better!” Dave throws up his hands and stands, wobbling on his feet.

John half-rises to help him, but Dave sits down on a shaky chair across from the bed. He stares at John, and John stares back. John breaks first, looking down at his lap. “I have issues, Dave. I’m just—“ he runs a hand through his hair. “This isn’t an excuse. I just... My dad—“ John swallows hard, forcing himself to look up at Dave. “He wasn’t great, I guess. So I think, I don’t know, maybe I’m not great either? And then there’s you, and you were literally killed and abducted and brainwashed, kinda, by an evil vampire overlord, and you’re still so... So human, and kind.”

“Because I try, John,” Dave says quietly. “I’m not just... good or something. Goodness isn’t inherent like that. You have to try to be good. Being human isn’t enough. There are plenty of humans who are monsters, and monsters who are human.”

“I know that, I guess,” John mumbles.

Dave looks at him sadly. “I don’t think you do. It’s not just that some monsters don’t kill people, it’s that humanity isn’t so... rigid.” John frowns and Dave shrugs. “I’ve had a lot to think about while you’re asleep.” He pauses, clasping his hands together and hanging his head. “So maybe this isn’t the time to get all up on this moralistic philosophy bullshit, but John, c’mon.

“You say that shit all the time. About me being human, or good, or kind or whatever. I’m not just those things because I am. I’m those things because I hated what I was so badly I made an effort to be good, to be nice to people, to try my best not to hurt anyone else.

“And yeah, maybe I fucked up a lot. I hurt you, I took your blood, I hurt others. But, that didn’t make me irredeemable. If you asked me five years ago if it did, then sure, I was never going to be a good person again. But John the shitty thing about being an adult, and being human, is that everyone’s a bad person sometimes. Your problem is that you think that your actions are some kind of score. Do enough bad things and you can never make up enough points to be good again. That’s not true. It isn’t about people seeing that you’re good, or kind, but that you do the best you can, that you let people help you, that you don’t lash out and push people away.” Dave takes a deep breath, and John stares at him. “Who you’re related to, your past, your nastiest impulses; those things don’t define you. What you think about those things, what you try and do, that’s what does. That’s who you are.” Dave pulls his feet up on the chair. “So yeah, you’re a horrible person right now, but that’s because of what you did, not who you are.”

They stare at each other, Dave’s expression unreadable. “How long have you been working on that?” John says weakly, scratching the back of his neck.

Dave snorts and rolls his eyes. “When you’re trapped in a cave with an abusive asshole who tells you that your only purpose in life is to kill, you either ruminate on the dichotomy of good and evil, or you believe him. There isn’t much to do in your free time.”

John sucks in a breath and stands. “I think I agree with you,” John says, and Dave gives him a wry smile.

“You think?”

John shrugs. “I haven’t had as much time to think about it as you. I guess... It’s just hard. To believe that, you know?” Dave nods.

Truly, John wants to believe Dave. Something about the idea of being in control of who he is appeals heavily to John, so much that it makes his heart ache for it, for that way out. But how can he parse the guilt and anger he feels with the idea that he could still be a good person. How can he be good when everything he feels is so laden with pain and suffering? He doesn’t know how to articulate that, to communicate it, to unload that burden on maybe the one other person who fully understands. The one person who, despite everything, doesn’t seem like he’s about to cut John out of his life for fucking up. Even when the fuck up was on this scale.

“How...” he starts, putting a hand over his aching heart. “How can I be good when I feel like this?”

Dave smiles at him. “Feel like what?”

“Angry,” John says, frowning. “Numb? Something. Just negativity. It just feels bad.”

For a while, Dave sits on that, watching him carefully. “John, I just think you’re depressed.”

Out of all the answers Dave could have given, that wasn’t what he’d been expecting. “I’m not depressed,” he says automatically. “It’s not like that.”

Dave, for some reason, looks confused. “I don’t know dude. I’m not a doctor or whatever, but... I think you are.” John tries to cut him off, but Dave holds up his hands and waves them. “I’m not saying you are, just that that’s what it looks like. That’s not like, a criticism. You know that, right?”

John looks at his lap, picking at his boxers. “I’m not depressed,” he repeats through gritted teeth. “I’m just like this, okay?” In truth, he doesn’t know. It wasn’t that he knew one way or the other, only that... something wasn’t right. He didn’t like that, thinking that he could blame his actions on something else. If he just accepted that, that he might have depression, it would feel cheap. Like shifting the goal posts. He wasn’t a dick, he was depressed. He wasn’t angry, he was depressed.

Like he could read his thoughts, Dave laughs. “Assholes can be depressed,” he says. John flops back on the bed and slings an arm over his eyes, head throbbing. “If you’re thinking something dumb about how you can’t be depressed because you’re not sad all the time, or you’re not trying to kill yourself, that’s just idiotic. If you’re thinking you can’t be depressed because you’re a bad person, that’s dumb too. Being depressed wouldn’t be your whole personality, just like being an asshole isn’t your whole personality.”

“I’m not going to just say I’m depressed and forget about it,” John snaps.

“Fuck no you’re not,” Dave snaps back, just as sharp. “Throwing me out of a car isn’t a symptom of depression, it’s a by-product of being a dick and being unwell. Because you know you’re not well, right? If it’s not depression, it’s something else. That’s not an excuse, it’s a fucking opportunity not to be a shitty person. If you understand, you can fix it. If you figure out you can’t walk because your leg is broken, that doesn’t fix it, and you don’t keep walking on it. You go to a doctor.” There’s shuffling, and John moves his arm to look at Dave.

He’s rifling through the pile of clothes there, pulling on ones that fit him. John’s heart lurches. “What are you doing?” he says, sitting up.

“Getting dressed,” Dave mumbles. He looks to John, rolling his eyes. “I’m not going anywhere. I’m just frustrated. I...” Dave licks his lips and sighs. “I don’t know. I like you, John. I, for some reason, don’t want to just leave you. I care about you. But you should care about you too. I’m not going to be here to talk bullshit at you until you’re cured or you feel less shitty about yourself. What you did was fucked up, but I want to stay. But if I’m going to stay, you have to try. You have to promise when this is over you’ll go see someone.”

“When this is over?” John says cautiously.

Still unsteady, Dave gently lowers himself back onto the bed, still not looking at John completely. “I told you, I don’t want to leave you. I want to stay.”

“I don’t know how I feel about that,” John admits.

Dave laughs softly, trailing into a sigh. “I don’t either.”

They sit, brooding.

“You’re smart, you know,” John says. Dave cocks an eyebrow.

“Not really. My sister was a hopeful-psychologist when we were kids. She basically gave me this talk when I was fourteen. I was depressed too. Still am, sometimes.” He considers his hands. “All the time, really, but you know, like I said, being depressed isn’t someone’s whole personality. Some days I forget I have it, sometimes it’s all I can think about. It’s not weakness to be like that.”

“I know that, you know. Logically.”

“But emotionally? Personally?”

“It feels weak. It feels like giving up.”

“Sometimes it is. Some days you are weak, and you do give up. It’s never gone, just better.”

“Why are you helping me?”

Dave looks at him with an almost comically disappointed look. “Because you’re my friend. I thought we went over this. We’ve had our fight, and, like a friend, I’m psycho-analysing you to try and get to the root of the obvious issues that haunt you. Like a normal friend.” Dave touches John’s hand. “You’re an asshole. But I wound you up, I knew you could get like that—“

“It is not your fault,” John says fiercely.

Dave grins. “I know it’s not. This is on you. I’m just saying, you were lashing out. You didn’t just wake up and decide to do this. There’s other things going on, and I was part of it. It’s not my fault that you reacted like that, but I’m not going to do anything like that again, either.” Dave pulls away, mimicking John’s earlier move and flopping back on the bed. “Man, being adult-ish and understanding and working through problems is exhausting. You owe me a few days of rest.”

“I owe you more than that,” John says, too serious for the moment. He lies down next to Dave, who shrugs and looks up at the ceiling. “Really, I do. I know this isn’t like, a great thing to put on you, but I might be dead by now if it wasn’t for you.” Dave glances at him briefly. “I’m not saying you saved me, just that... If I had found any other vampire, one that wasn’t like you, or any other creature who didn’t think about this kind of stuff... They might’ve killed me on day one. I don’t... I don’t try as hard as I should to stay alive, and when I found you...”

“Your dad had just died,” Dave whispers.

“Yeah.” John copies Dave’s volume, his voice quiet, the moment feeling intimate. “If I’d found someone else, I might’ve been food. You know, the first time I found you, you didn’t even seem to react. You didn’t know I was a hunter, I guess, and you were nice to me. You tried to seduce me and lure me down an alley—“ Dave splutters in laughter. “—but you were nice.”

“I was probably hungry,” Dave drawls. “Doesn’t mean I’m into you.”

They laugh, lying side-by-side, slipping into talking about those first few months. A few weeks ago, none of this would’ve been funny, John reflects. Somehow now that John had gone and done worse, it all seemed easy to be fond of. Dave biting him, John trying to stab him, their frequent tussles in woods, or parking lots, or alleyways and open fields. Of course, though, the easiness couldn’t last. John couldn’t just leave it at that.

“I hurt you,” John says, closing his eyes. “I knew you were helpless, tied up and just upset, shouting, but I snapped. I can’t... I don’t want to do that anymore.”

“You won’t,” Dave says. “Not to me.”

“How can you be sure?”

“I can’t. All I know is if you do, you’ll never see me again.”

John nods. “I know. You shouldn’t even be here now. I should deal with my shit first. I can’t just do something like that to someone and be forgiven,” John says, turning away from the slowly rotating fan to look at Dave. The room is completely dark now, but Dave’s face was close enough to be lit up by the watery light coming through the curtains.

“Not forgiven, just... on probation.”

“Thank you for even that.” Dave smiles, a flicker over his lips. John yawns, realising belatedly that he was probably dehydrated and hungry. He sits up slowly, reaching for the mini fridge on the opposite wall, letting himself indulge in a bottle of overpriced water, rather than leave Dave alone again. He opens it and guzzles over half of it at once, yawning again as it settled in his stomach.

He crawls up the bed, head on the pillow, and Dave follows, sitting up and leaning against the headboard in silence. Before John knows it, he’s asleep.

Morning, or afternoon, or whatever it was, comes too quick. It feels like only a moment had passed when John was awake again. The room is still dim, flashing dully with muted colours from a silence TV. His heart lurches when the first thing his eyes focus on is Dave, still sitting beside him.

John raises a hand to his face, feeling for his glasses. Dave must’ve taken them off when he fell asleep. He’s under the covers, warm and surprisingly well-rested. Dave notices his movements and looks down at him.

“Hey,” he says.

“Hi,” John replies, voice rough from sleep. “W’time?”

Dave twists around, checking the clock. “Just after ten,” he says, pushing himself upright. John groans, rolling over and screwing his eyes shut again. “And you’re usually so chipper in the morning,” Dave says dryly behind him.

Unfortunately, John doesn’t manage to get back to sleep. Once he was awake, he was awake. Getting to sleep was always the hard part in his experience, especially when he wasn’t truly tired, just reluctant to get out of bed. It was warm, but not uncomfortably so, Dave’s body a cooling presence that kept him from overheating under the piled blankets. The thought of Dave next to him is what eventually convinces him to stop trying to go back to bed and to sit up properly. He stretches, cracks his neck, turning his attention to Dave. 

Dave rested with his chin on his knees, watching the dully flashing TV screen, almost mesmerised by it. John casts his mind back to their conversations, the ones about TV, and movies, and it occurred to him, not for the first time, just how out of the loop Dave was pop-culture-wise. Any references he made were dated, and many John made went over his head. When they did connect it was always on trashy movies that John was sure the general population had forgotten by now but that Dave seemed to remember fondly.

“What’re you watching?” John mumbles, and Dave turns towards his voice. His face turns first, then his eyes drag away from the screen, lips twitching into a sheepish half-smile.

“Infomercials,” he admits, John turning to squint at the blurry screen. They sit in silence, John unsure about what Dave was thinking, or really what he was thinking himself. Were they supposed to pretend it had all never happened? Were they meant to talk about it? John wanted to take Dave’s lead on it, but he was itching to have a resolution to it all, good or bad. Dave seems to sense his impatience, sighing and turning away from the TV again. “You want to talk about it?” Dave asks, but it’s pointed like a question.

“No,” he says guiltily, looking away.

“It’s fine,” Dave says, sounding more irritating than anything. “I guess we should talk about it, now that you don’t look like you’re going to pass out.” John bristles, but Dave waves a hand at him before he can jump to his defence. “You’re only human, dude.”

Still, even after mostly agreeing that yes, they should talk about it, they don’t speak for a long while. Without the TV to distract him, Dave spends that time staring at John’s face, squinting at him like he was trying to read his mind.

“I don’t know,” John finally says, cracking under the scrutiny. Dave’s eyebrows raise.

“You don’t know if you’re human?”

“What?” John says, tripping up. “No, I mean, I don’t know in general, I guess.”

“About what?”

“About this,” John says with an exasperated hand wave. “About what I should be doing right now to make it up to you, or what you’re thinking, or what we’re doing. I don’t know, you know?”

Dave’s face screws up. “Then ask me,” he says bluntly, not missing a beat. John stares at him blankly and Dave rolls his eyes. “If you don’t know, then ask, you idiot.”

John looks away, dragging two hands down his face and groaning. “You make it sound so simple.” Dave sits up properly, giving him a disbelieving look that made John feel like a child.

“Because it is simple,” he says. “Here, I’ll even start. What are you upset about?”

John squirms. He didn’t like having the tables turned on him at the best of times, but being prodded into talking about his feelings was even worse. It was at times like these that he wished he was better with words, so he could tell Dave how he was feeling, make it come out just right and sound exactly like it did in his head. He decides to start simple. “I hurt you,” he says, chest tight. “Physically, emotionally... I was shitty to you. Not just now, but throughout these last two weeks.”

“It’s not the worst two weeks of my life,” Dave says, making John look at him sharply. He seems taken aback for a second by John’s sudden intense expression, shrinking away. ‘What? It’s the truth.”

“You’ve had a worse week then being poisoned, kidnapped, hog-tied, driven around the country and thrown in a ditch?” John says dubiously.

Dave tries to look light-hearted, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “Well, when you put it like that,” he says through a laugh. John looks unconvinced and Dave knows it. When he isn’t able to distract John or wave him off, he shrugs and settles back agains the headboard. “I spent years with Bro, dude. I’d say that qualifies as the worst time in my life and it was more than two weeks.”

“What did he do to you?” John blurts out. He’d been under the impression that Bro just... well, he wasn’t sure what he thought Bro did. Just made people into vampires, he supposed. Dave looks distinctly uncomfortable, so John quickly back-pedalling. “You don’t have to tell me,” he stresses, looking at Dave in concern.

Dave chews his lip and picks at his nails, seemingly lost in thought. Just when John is considering whether to interrupt his thoughts before he got lost in them, he looks back at John with a fraught expression. Unable to fight it, John shifts closer, putting an arm around Dave’s shoulders. The touch isn’t rejected, Dave leaning against him, John once again shocked by how insubstantial he felt. Like he was barely there at all.

“It wasn’t that I didn’t want to leave,” Dave starts, quiet and careful with his words. “We weren’t allowed to leave. You couldn’t really do anything without his go-ahead. You ate when he wanted you to, you know?” Dave’s face takes on that far-away look. John didn’t know, but he could imagine. “He’d— well, him and his cronies, they’d pop out of no where, slam you against the wall, maybe beat you up a little. You had to be able to fight back, all the time, no matter what.

“Sometimes they’d send you out and you’d have to bring someone back, alive, watch him drink.” If John couldn’t pick it up from context alone, Dave’s face would’ve told him all he needed to know about how Bro drank.

“Dave, you don’t have to tell me,” John says gently. The other slumps a little in his half-embrace.

“Oh good,” he says, faux laughing. “You get it anyway.” John doesn’t speak, just pulls Dave tighter against him, trying to sort through this somewhat-obvious-in-hindsight revelation. Of course Dave hadn’t stayed with the clan voluntarily. How could someone like Dave survive with people like Bro. John knew that they killed, that they would’ve laughed at Dave and his string of snacks that he left behind. He’d known all that, but he’d lumped them all in together. Again he’s forced to wonder; how is he meant to tell the humane vampires apart from the ones lost to the throes of the undead? One thing was certain, though. Bro had to die. Even if no one else did, John knew more now than ever that Bro had to die.

“We’ll kill him,” he says fiercely. Dave immediately shakes his head.

“I can’t,” he says, fangs digging into his lips. “I’m not going in there.”

“I’ll kill him for you,” John insists. “I’ll make sure of it.” Dave looks away, and John can’t see his face, but his shoulders shake.

Dave lets out a watery laugh. “He sure deserves it.”

John makes himself meet Dave’s eye. He unwinds his arm from his shoulder and instead grabs both his hands, steeling himself. “What he did was unforgivable, but that doesn’t make what I did any better,” he says. “I’m not going to pretend that killing Bro will make things better but... I’m... I want to believe I can be better.” Dave looks at him, and John stares back. “I have to believe that, right?” Dave finally cracks a proper smile.

“Yeah, you do.”

“I spent so long thinking...” John says, trailing off. “I have to believe I’m not a lost cause. That I can better myself.” John must’ve been making a face because Dave guffaws and shoves at his shoulder.

“You should’ve figured that out on your own, asshole! It shouldn’t take being a dick to me and learning that I’m all sad and shit to make you realise you aren’t the devil incarnate or whatever the fuck.”

John flushes brightly and drops Dave’s hands. “Hey, I was going through some shit too!”

Dave only laughs just as hard and as loud as before. “Yeah, going through your emo phase!” Dave sits up, swinging his legs over the side of the bed and standing on still-shaky legs. “Since you apologised like a big boy and are on your journey to self-betterment, I forgive you,” Dave says, and John dares to be hopeful. “One more fuck up like that and I’m out of here and you leave me alone forever, okay?”

John beams. “Okay.” It felt resolved, weirdly so. John felt like he shouldn’t be forgiven so easily, shouldn’t be let off the hook with so little repercussion. But, tentatively, John thinks maybe he should let it be like this. Let Dave forgive him, let himself be a little easier on himself. Everything from the last 24 hours weighs heavy on his mind, like something that couldn’t be forgiven, but John thinks maybe he should give this redemption thing a shot.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> listen, sometimes you do something terrible and it’s inexcusable but that doesn’t mean becoming a better person is impossible
> 
> obviously, this isn’t true about everything, but this is fiction, and i like making things more complicated than they need to be. in real life, some things people do completely makes it impossible for them to ever be good people, please dont yell at me


	11. Trouble

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dave is in trouble.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hope everyone had a good holiday and great start to the new year! I’m on holiday still so chapters might be uploaded slowly for a little while longer, but hopefully this one is enough to tide you over while that’s happening  
no new tags this time, except some mentions of religion at one point. It’s pretty light and only for a small part of a larger conversation, so it should be easy to skim over if you don’t like that sort of thing :)  
enjoy!

At first, things were, undoubtably, complicated. There were two parts of Dave vying for his attention and he just couldn’t seem to make up his mind. There was the half of him that wanted desperately to forgive John, to see past the last day and let him pick up right where they’d left off. Friends, growing surprisingly close, easy jokes and cherry laughter. Then, there was the part of him that had taken the brunt of the betrayal. That part wanted to curl up and shut himself off, never let anyone in again. It was the part of him that he felt was the most irrational of all.

It was hard to be soft, to know just how little resistance to put up, to know when to cut someone off, to know when to take pity. It was messy and unsure there were no right answers, no matter who Dave asked or where he looked.

All Dave can think to do is to put what happened in context, to look at it as a whole. To think about what happened as a series of choices, of reactions, of mistakes. He tries to think about it, to make sense of what he wants to do, but something in his gut tells him what he already knows.

No matter what Dave thought logically, emotionally, he wanted to forgive John. He was reluctant to let his friendship fall apart in his hands, to leave and never see him again. His self preservation was there, nagging him, but his heart was already set. He could pretend to think about it for hours on end, trying to convince himself that he just wasn’t sure, that he just didn’t know, but his mind was already made up. It was like watching a coin, flipping in the air. He told himself he was flipping it to make up his mind, but he knew what he was hoping for it to land on, hoping it would justify his decision.

What would Rose do? He tries to conjure her voice, her thoughts, but she’s too far away now. Her face is a blonde smudge in his memories, her personality an ill-defined impression. After so long away, who was he to say how she’d changed, matured, grown? Maybe she’d tell him it was a mistake. Maybe she’d tell him to trust his gut. Or maybe she’d just tell him to be careful, kiss his forehead and tell him she loved him.

By the time the moment comes to make a decision, to watch the coin land, Dave knows he’s going to forgive John. It’s easier than he thought it was going to be. The words come naturally, no hesitation in his voice. There’s no rush of doubt, or guilt, or anxiety. Just the pleasure of reentering a friendship that he’d missed in the little time it had been gone. If being his friend makes me happy more than not, how can it be a bad thing?

Even though he feels so sure about his choice, there’s still some tip-toeing to be done in the following hours and days.

They don’t leave, not immediately. It felt wrong to speed along like this had been a minor detour, racing off into the great wide somewhere without a spare thought for this change. They couldn’t just leave, it was all too significant. Neither of them said it, but they silently agreed to loiter a while longer.

John gets the laptop that Dave didn’t know he had out and charges it one night. It’s clunky, and old, and probably as thick as Dave’s arm, but it connects well enough to the motel wifi and John has a selection of torrented movies on it, so it does the job well enough. When John is out, or asleep, Dave plays on it, fingers unused to the motions of typing from so infrequently doing it, but it comes back to him naturally enough. He watches movies or looks up current events, trying to catch up on the life he lost in the meantime. Dave would have happily stayed here for as long as they could, but John quickly becomes visibly impatient.

“The Sanctuary gets quiet the closer it gets to Christmas,” John says one afternoon. “The hunters hub,” he clarifies when Dave makes no response.

“Why’s that?” Dave asks, humouring him.

“Just, I don’t know, it gets cold I guess. And people are spending time with their families? It’s already late November, so things will be winding down...” John keeps casting him flittering side-glances that Dave does his best to ignore. Dave wondered if any of that was even true, or more excuses to get them back on the road. It seemed like a hub of supernatural would care little about the cold, or especially Christmas. Dave points this out to him and John shrugs. “I don’t think it’s just Christmas,” he insists. “Just winter time celebrations in general. I think there’s some pagan holiday around the same time too.”

“How novel,” Dave drawls, John shaking his head with a dry laugh.

“I’m not religious, dude, I can’t keep track of all the holidays all year round.” He slouches in his seat on the one chair in the room. “Are you?”

“Religious?” Dave asks, looking up from the laptop screen. “Not really. My mom’s parents were Jewish, but we didn’t really practice.” He glances back down at his screen. “It wasn’t a big part of our upbringing. We’d do Yom Kippur and all that but I never read the Torah. Your dad wasn’t religious either?” he asks, gently, trying not to dig his fingers into any wounds.

John shrugs noncommittally. “My dad was baptised Anglican but I wasn’t. I don’t know anything about it either.” He pauses, tilting his head to look up at the ceiling. Dave observes the slope of his neck and the shape of his jaw from under his eyelashes. “Does that mean you don’t believe in God?” he asks, fingers tapping on the arms of his chair. Dave hums, equally noncommittal.

“Maybe. If there is one, I don’t think they want to be known, or we’d know, right?”

“I guess I envy people who really believe. Like maybe if I thought I was doing God’s work, it wouldn’t be so hard.”

“I think things should be hard, sometimes,” Dave says, closing the laptop and drawing John’s gaze. “Using a higher power to justify killing people is hardly ever a good idea. If you have to kill, if it really is the right thing to do, you should have to justify it yourself. In the end, something may or may not be out there, but you are, and you have to live with yourself, with or without faith.”

John smiles ruefully, running a hand through his hair. “Loyal to yourself, huh?” Dave smiles back, shrugging a shoulder.

“Why the sudden interest in religion?”

“I guess it’s not so much an interest in religion as it is an interest in you.” Despite himself, Dave flushes little, thrown by the honesty. He isn’t sure how to respond, picking at his clothes and letting out a burble of nervous laughter. “I feel like I know all these weird things about you, but nothing normal. Like, where were you born?”

“Texas,” Dave replies, looking up at John who was looking at him in turn. They swivel to face each other, a mutual agreement that they were about to have a conversation. “Dallas.”

“A city boy,” John teases and Dave leans back on his palms with an eye roll. “I grew up in Washington. State,” he adds, before Dave can ask. Dave had guessed as much, without John saying. His dad had just died when they’d met. It seemed likely he’d still been close to home. “Maple Valley. You haven’t been there,” he says with a rueful smile.

“I might’ve been,” Dave protests, but John only laughs at him. “Got any other burning questions?”

“What’s your favourite colour?” John asks and Dave snickers. “Mine’s green. Neon green, bright as it can get,” he says with a toothy grin.

“Blue,” Dave says. “Blue like a summer sky.” Just saying it embarrasses him, making him break eye contact with John and look at his fidgety hands.

“Poetic,” John quips, though it sounds less like a jab and more quietly impressed. “What about...” he casts about the room, trying to find something else to ask. Dave felt like the new kid at a sleepover, being quizzed about his favourite celebrities and what growing up in Texas was like. “Your first kiss?” John says, grinning like a school girl and putting his cheeks in his palms like one.

Dave snorts and heaves a sigh. “That’s probably the least interesting question yet,” Dave says dryly. John shrugs.

“It’s a fun thing to know.”

“If you say so,” Dave says doubtfully. He thinks back to his teenage years, and back further, trying to find his very first kiss. “My first real kiss, or the stupid kissing you do when you’re six?”

“Real kiss,” John says, clearly enjoying himself.

“This is stupid,” Dave warns again, but John is unfazed, watching him expectantly.

Dave sits up properly and crosses his arms. “I think it was this kid at junior prom,” Dave says eventually. “We’d both left cause it was lame and someone had spiked the punch only enough to make it taste bad and nothing else. Teachers were going around with little rulers and everything it was the worst. So we got out of there and just walked around the school. When you’re a kid a school at night, all empty and powered down— it’s like the coolest shit ever,” Dave says, John laughing in agreement. “And I think we were just bored, or trying to act out what we saw in movies, because I kinda just asked. Like, ‘we should kiss or something’, and then we did.”

After a moment of thought staring at the ceiling, Dave purses his lips. “His name was like Kevin, I think. Kyle, or Kevin or something. A K name. He sorta sucked,” Dave admitted. “I never spoke to him again.”

John looks thoughtful again. “Oh,” he says, tapping a finger on his lips. Dave examined him carefully, eyes narrowed. John must’ve realised what his non-committal answer sounded like, because he quickly shook his head. “No, it’s not that,” he says, Dave quirking an eyebrow. “Just that it sucks that he... sucked?” he says lamely.

“I’m gay, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Dave says flatly.

John’s nose crinkles. “I mean, I kinda got that. The into dudes part anyway. Really, I was just thinking that it’s too bad your first kiss was pretty bluh,” he says, sticking out his tongue. “I don’t care that it was a dude.”

“So?” Dave prompts.

“So, what?” John says. “You want my first kiss story too?”

Dave snorts. “No, I told you, that’s stupid.”

“So what then?” John asks, brain forever slower than his mouth. “Oh.”

“You don’t have to tell me,” Dave says placatingly, in case he was somehow stepping into a sore subject.

“No, it’s okay, I would, I just don’t know,” John says, and he looks a little fretful. Dave smiles reassuringly. “I’ve never really had time to think about it. I kissed some girl once. Or, well, she kissed me. She kinda sucked too,” he joked.

Dave shrugs, punching playfully at John’s arm. Knowing John, he probably had his head so far ingrown in high school that he’d completely missed anything even romance-adjacent. “It’s normal not to know. You don’t ever have to if you don’t want to.” Dave grins. “But we can find out together when this is over, if you want.”

John gives him a blank look. “What?”

“Like, we can go to a bar,” Dave says. “Or whatever. A coffee shop. Wherever people who look like you find dates. Anywhere, I guess.”

John seems to find that completely unacceptable. He splutters and shakes his head, both of them laughing at his reaction, and each other.

“Any more questions?” Dave asks with a smug smile.

“No,” John says petulantly. “You’re too irritating to talk to anymore,” he says, shoving away Dave’s smarmy face.

John could call him irritating all he liked, but when they finally got moving again, John was more than happy to pass the time talking up a storm with Dave. It was easier to, once Dave was in the front seat, able to actually hear him properly, both of them able to access the other’s facial expressions, their gestures.

John drives like he’d made this trip many times before, and he probably had. He takes back roads and detours that shave off travel time, ducking past congested areas and bumping over unpaved roads that seemed more path than traversable terrain. All the while, Dave squeezes John for any information he might have regarding the other supernatural in The Sanctuary. As much as Dave wanted to, John warned him that it would be unlikely that he could go into town. After all, it was crawling with hunters, and contracted supernatural paid to sniff out other supernatural. He’d have to stay out of sight and smell, hauled up in some motel, or in the truck, while John got to go into town and buy what he needed.

It was disappointing to say the least. If there was one thing Dave would have liked, it would be meeting other non-humans like him, talking to them, maybe trading some tips or sharing experiences. No matter how much he asked, John was apologetically firm.

“I have no way of knowing what supernatural are on who’s payroll. There’s certainly no vampires in the hub, and they’re usually at the top of kill lists. Not many people have a need for a living vampire,” he said, Dave’s heart sinking. John seems sorry to even have to say it, but Dave assures him that he got it. Vampires weren’t like werewolves, or even fairies. They killed for food, for sport, for fun. They were irredeemably evil according to most.

Still, that couldn’t stop Dave from daydreaming. Meeting someone who didn’t want to kill him, who understood just how hard being undead could be. Even just someone willing to listen, hunter or no, would be something new, something exciting. John was great and all, but he was Dave’s friend already. He wanted to meet more people, to have friends again, a social circle. He’d been alone a long time, with only meals and John for company, and the latter had only been for just under three weeks.

Even if Dave couldn’t have what he wanted, John tried to placate him by promising to buy him a souvenir, as well as at least have a sniff around, for any possible vampire-friendly people in town. He couldn’t be too obvious about it, Dave knew that much, but it was a nice sentiment. John also promised to buy him the fancy shampoo he’d always liked, so that helped brighten the mood considerably. Now that he was having showers again, Dave was hard to drag out of them.

Completely free at last, Dave was finally starting to feel like this was a road trip between friends. When they stop at pit stops, he sits up front and waits, not covered like a blanket or tucked behind a building. Just a beanie John had brought him pulled low over his pointed ears, a scarf tucked around his face to hide most of his dull complexion. He was free to watch the people around them, watch John pump the gas or buy food in the station. He wasn’t adrift anymore, he was a part of the proceedings. He’d help John count cash, hold his food while he drove, fiddle with the music or the radio.

It was finally fun.

“How much further?” Dave asks as they sit in the truck bed, John nibbling on a late lunch of gas station sandwiches and snack foods.

John glanced up at the sky, as if measuring the distance in the sun and frowned. “Maybe another forty minutes,” he said, taking another bite. “twenty-five for you. I’ll find a motel for you in town and go on my own. Dave frowns back at him.

“Still not happy about that,” Dave says, like he’d been saying for days now. John sighed out heavily through his nose. “I know, I know,” Dave interjects before John can explain again why he couldn’t come. “Just wish I could see it is all,” he mumbles, staring down at his laces.

His sneakers were tattered, but when John had offered to help replace them, Dave had been reluctant. These shoes had been brand new when he’d died— he’d saved up all his spare change and odd-job pay to buy them, wanting to buy them with his own money. He had never minded that his mom could afford to buy them anything he or Rose wanted, but when he’d started earning his own money, it felt only right to buy more himself.

John dusts off his hands and slides out of the bed. “C’mon,” he says, looking apologetic. “Maybe another time. When we’re not in a hurry. I can go in, test the waters, maybe find a place you’d be safe.”

Dave perks up at that. He hops off the bed as well, and both of them clamber back into the car.

True to his word, half an hour later John finds Dave a motel to hole up in while he restocks his supplies. It’s significantly less painful to wait through the time with the TV, the laptop, books, and anything else they’d collected to amuse him while John was out or asleep. Even so, Dave felt cooped up still. John had had no idea on how long he’d take, only that he’d be back in time to feed Dave. That left anything from a few hours to well into the night. Dave’s last meal had been late the previous night, which meant he had until the same time that night before he began to get desperate enough to look for blood on his own. The combination of waiting, of being cooped up, of the uncertainty... It made him pace irritably, or flick through TV channels without looking.

When John finally returns, he looked exhausted. Dave waits for him by the door like an expectant cat, sniffing around to try and figure out what he brought. Together, they pour out his haul on the bed and Dave takes it in.

Some of the things were familiar— white pine that he knew John made stakes out of, holy water that stunk to high hell when Dave uncorked it, garlic and other house-hold looking plants and chemicals —other things were completely new to him. There were herbs and powders and viscous liquids Dave couldn’t identify, bits of stone or crystals or strange charms in languages and alphabets he didn’t know. There were also weapons, a lot of them. Knives, bullet casings, special blends of gunpowder with various other things in them.

There were also strange little trinkets. Things Dave wouldn’t associate with a hunter, or even the supernatural. A compact mirror, a pendant with no chain, a drinking glass and a tiny framed picture of a painting Dave was sure was famous.

When Dave asked, John startled.

“Oh, those are job tokens,” John says, picking one up. Dave cocks his head and slides closer to him. “When you need to hunt something like a spectre, or a ghost, it can be pretty hard to find them, or to be sure you have the right one. So, these are little things, usually from the place you can find whatever it is, enchanted to lead you to them. They have auctions of them, big huge buckets full of them. People bid on the ones that look interesting, since a lot of them don’t have any backstory or information attached to them, only a job number. If you complete it, you turn it in for the bounty.” He flips over the tiny painting and pops it out of his frame. On the back was a name of a museum, stamped into it, along with a string of numbers, and a name. “This one looks like it’s from a souvenir store or something, so I thought that might be fun. An excuse to go to a museum.”

Dave hums, a little lost in thought. Ghosts, huh? Of course those existed on top of everything else. “Will you tell me about them?” he asked, picking up the pendant charm and turning it over. There was a little paper and taped tag on it with a barcode and a number. All of them had one attached somewhere, except the painting, it’s number in a little plastic baggy that John tucked the painting back into when he was done with it.

“The tokens?”

“The ghosts,” Dave says, voice conspiratorially low.

John rolled his eyes and put the painting back in the small heap. “They’re actually not that interesting. Ghost is kind of an inaccurate name too, I guess. It’s more short-hand than anything. They’re more like old memories or energies lingering after someone dies or leaves a place. Mostly negative. Even just moving house can leave something behind. Sometimes they’re just old spells gone bad. People who die don’t leave ghosts, but sometimes peoples’ death’s do. Yeah?”

Dave puts the pendant back and hums again. “Kinda disappointing. I wanted to see what kind of nerd ghost haunts a museum,” he laughed.

John sorts and packs his things up, tipping powders into vials and liquids into bottles. Dave tried to help, but a lot of the things John had brought were specifically for hurting vampires, so he sets Dave up putting the bottles and containers back where they belonged once they were safely stoppered.

The rest of the night, John makes up some of his special bullets, and Dave watched on anxiously. He hadn’t thought it would bother him so much, but seeing so many things in one room that were designed to maim and kill him was making him uncomfortable. It was no better when they were packed away, Dave knowing that they were close at hand, hidden and inconspicuous. He must’ve cast one too many uncertain looks at John’s things, because he stops mid-bullet to look at him.

“You okay?” he asked, and Dave hesitated.

“We should take this stuff out to the truck,” he said, trying to sound casual. Usually, John was a little denser than most when it came to social interaction, but after a moment of thought, it seemed to click for him. He nods, and finished what he was doing before lugging everything out of the room. Even just seeing all the weapons and components leave the room made Dave feel better.

Logically, he knew he had nothing to fear, but something about those things left Dave distinctly uneasy. The one upside of having John take everything out was that he was forced to just relax and hang out with Dave for once. They talked and hung out a lot on the road, but at night, John liked to spend as long as possible being productive before they turned in.

When John comes back, Dave smiled, scooting over on the bed and patting the comforter beside him. “Thanks, John,” he says sincerely. John smiles brightly and leaps onto the bed, bouncing them both and jostling Dave out of his seriousness. “Tell me about the hub,” Dave says quickly once they’d both settled and stopped laughing like children.

John lets out a long satisfied breath, like he’d taken a swig from a cold drink. “It was actually fairly busy. Turns out some hunter division was clearing out old supplies and tokens and whatever. The auction house was running the whole time I was there,” he said, then looked a little sheepish. “I almost stayed overnight, to get the most I could. I could never resist a bargain, and I’m still getting used to having someone to come back to,” he muses.

Dave feigns being offended at being forgotten, but he couldn’t blame John. After so long, it was weird to Dave too. He’d gotten used to it over the last couple of weeks, having someone by his side constantly, but it still felt unusual when he stopped to consider it. “Well, I’m glad you came back,” is all he says. John snorts and slides down the bed so he can recline.

“When I thought about coming back to a hungry Dave, that got me right back in the truck,” he said, his smile a little strained. Dave couldn’t help but think that maybe he had just been guilty, considering leaving Dave alone again. Dave is sure he would’ve been sick to his stomach with worry, if John hadn’t come back. Maybe he should’ve been madder that John had even had the thought, but he knew that John would do enough beating himself up about it for the both of them.

“See anything unusual?” Dave says swiftly.

John perks a little and his smile softens. “Yeah, I saw a tree nymph. Two, actually. One was an indigenous tree from the pacific. They had an accent I don’t know. Apparently, they sailed all the way to America to see the other one. A redwood, I think.”

“Sailed?” Dave laughs in surprise and disbelief. “Why not fly?” he asked incredulously.

“Have you ever seen a tree fly?” John shot back. “They probably could’ve gotten on a cargo plane or something in tree form, but I think being up in the air with no sunlight or water or dirt would’ve made them sick or something. I don’t know a lot about their biology.” John thought for a second. “They’re not usually hunted, and no one really know how many there are. They kind of keep to themselves, mostly.”

Dave considers that. “Makes sense.”

John goes on to tell him a little more about the different stores and people he saw. He mentions some people he knew, new connections he made, some idle gossip from around town. Apparentlyreally was meant to be quiet around Christmas time, and that wasn’t something John had just said to get them moving. This year though, it was apparently as busy as ever. Neither of them had a good theory as to why. “I think it might still just be too warm for a lot of them to move on,” was all John could come up with.

While Dave happily could have talked about it for hours, it was getting late, and John would need to sleep soon. That meant Dave had to eat now or wait until morning and he didn’t feel like waiting through the night on empty veins.

John seems to have the same thought as him, slowly pushing himself upright. He takes one of the juice boxes from the nightstand and turns to face Dave a little better. Then, they both hesitated. One of John’s arms was still sliced up from giving Dave blood while he’d been passed out, and the other arm was his dominant hand, the one they avoided drinking from when they could help it. It wouldn’t be all bad to drink from the sliced up arm, but Dave imagined it was already sore enough without him adding to the problem. He didn’t want to make any assumptions, so he waited, looking at John expectantly. It takes John a little longer to puzzle out what Dave was thinking, then he frowns.

“I don’t think I want to reopen this,” he says, tenderly touching the bandage on his arm. “Maybe just go for my neck,” he says. Dave looks unconvinced. “Surely it’s better? You said once that the veins were more accessible there or something. Don’t have to bite as deep, or for as long?”

“I guess,” Dave says. “But you said once that you didn’t like me touching your neck.”

John flushes. “Well, I guess I trust you more now. Besides, you’ve had plenty of time to kill me, if you were going to.” That seemed like only half the story to Dave. When he’d told him that, it hadn’t seemed like he’d said it out of concern for his safety.

“I can just be gentle,” Dave argued. “If you’re going to be weird about it, I’d rather not.”

“I won’t be weird!” John continues to protest. “Just hurry up and do it, you’re making mountains out of molehills, dude.”

Dave huffs through his nose. “Turn around then,” he says. John opens his mouth to argue and Dave shoves at him, trying to prod him into place. “I’m not straddling you, John! Turn around,” he said, and that got John into position right quick. Dave slides up behind him, touching cold fingers to his neck. “Don’t be weird about this,” Dave warns again. “It’s really not an issue to drink from your arms.”

“Hurry up,” is all John says, squirming in impatience.

After a few more ‘hold still!’s and a little more negotiating of limbs and weight, they settle down, Dave awkwardly positioned with his legs either side of John’s body, John fidgeting and leaning slightly back against him. Not enough that Dave was supporting his weight, but enough that Dave wouldn’t have to catch him if he got woozy.

“Last chance,” Dave said in warning, John slapping his thigh in response.

Carefully, Dave presses his teeth to John’s skin and he feels him shiver. His lips brush over his skin as lightly as he can, finding the best spot to bite. John’s heart beats in his mouth, and if Dave lets himself, he can pretend it’s his own heart beating. After a lingering moment to let John object at the last second, Dave bites down. He makes it as quick as he could, John shuddering in front of him but keeping mostly silent.

Like always, Dave drinks as quickly and cleanly as he could, taking steady, slow mouthfuls that wouldn’t drain him too quickly, but wouldn’t take too much or make him feel sick. It was a difficult balance that was different for every person, but after so long feeding only from John, Dave was pretty confident that he knew just the right pressure and speed to aim for to make them both satisfied. Every time Dave’s teeth brush John’s neck he can feel him squirm. He flicks John’s side, reminding him to sit still, but it doesn’t seem to do much. He grabs at John’s sides, trying to hold him still. It was awkward enough already being pressed together like this without John’s discomfort making it worse.

Having gone just a little slower than usual to account for the faster blood flow, it takes a minute or two longer than Dave would have liked, but it was still over relatively quickly. Dave pulls back, instinctively licking at the wound. John squeaks and Dave freezes, feeling stupid. He finishes closing the wound with his fingers, like he had with John’s arm, and John sags.

“That okay?” Dave asks, carefully extracting himself. John nods dazedly, sinking into the bed. “Worse than usual?” John shakes his head, eyes closed.

“Stop worrying,” John mumbles, fumbling with the juice box until Dave stabbed the straw in for him. “It was good. Just shut up,” he says before gulping the box down. Dave rolled his eyes. He must’ve taken just a little too much. There wasn’t any circumstance Dave could think of that would make John consider feeding ‘good’, unless it was that it wasn’t happening.

“Go to bed then,” Dave sighs, yanking the covers out from under John’s weight and throwing them over top of him. He felt restless already, wanting to do something physical. He didn’t want to leave the room while John was awake, though, not wanting to worry him. Once John was asleep, he’d go for a walk, clear his head. That was something he could do now. Dave can’t help but smile. John sees through slotted eyes and smiles back at him, soft and gooey. It makes Dave’s chest warm. “Go to bed,” he repeats, ignoring John’s complaints as he tucked him in.

This was trouble, Dave thought, staring down at John’s fluttering eyelashes and messy hair. Big trouble.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks again Sam for being Sam <3


	12. Blind Prophet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John shares an old friend with his newest one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> phew! and i’m back from my extended break (hopefully)  
this one is a little different from the usual, but i hope you all enjoy it regardless  
cheers!

Things were, uneasily, nervously, slipping into something John could consider normal. Something he could live with. A few days had passed since... and John’s emotions had settled somewhat. Instead of the overpowering guilt weighing him down, his heart was now full of determination. Determination not to let anything like that happen again, determination not to squander this second chance he’d been given, determination above all else to make this work. That wasn’t to say pancakes didn’t flip in his belly when he blurted something out that might’ve been over the line, or that he wasn’t lanced with fear when he woke up and Dave wasn’t around. But, even still, he refused to let himself lapse into a guilt-ridden depression. After the first few days, Dave had made it clear that he wanted to move on, and John wanted to as well. More than anything, really. He wanted to take it all back and go back to being friends. He wanted to be a good person.

“Where to next?” Dave asks, John slipping out of his daze and sitting up straighter at the wheel.

“An old friend,” John says. “Or, maybe an old enemy.” John smiles to himself, enjoying the mystery. Dave, beside him, huffs.

“Well, which is it?” he says. “Is this someone I can meet?”

John pauses and his brows twitch. He hadn’t actually thought all that much about that aspect. In his mind, he’d imagined himself introducing the pair, turned over in his mind what their dynamic might be like. He hadn’t thought about whether it was a good idea. After a moment, he nods, slow and unsure. “I think so. I really do,” he assures, glancing over at Dave’s doubtful face. “She’s... interesting. You’ll see.”

They slip down roads even more off-road than before. Mud with rutted tracks and dry, unmowed grass framing them in. John takes a few wrong turns and has to stop to consult his map, turning himself around and finding their way again. The day was still young and bright, inching towards noon when he recognises the road they pull onto.

At the end stood a few mailboxes, one of which splattered with obnoxious paint and dented beyond belief. The road itself was a dead end, serving more like an exceedingly long driveway than an actual road. The other mailboxes were dusty and dry, John knowing that only one person lived in the cluster of farm houses at the end of the road.

Dave had fallen mostly silent at some point, looking out the passenger window. John couldn’t see his expression, so without his constant chatter, that batter-filled feeling was soaking his stomach once more.

“You okay?” he asks after a stretch of silence too long to bear.

Dave turns and looks out the windscreen, with an unreadable mask. “I think so. Haven’t met many new people in the last few years,” he says, picking at his jeans. John can see his ears twitching occasionally, his knee bobbing, and reaches out a hand to still it.

“She’s... a lot. But she won’t hurt you. I promise.” He pulls his hand away and tries to focus on the road and not his doubts.

At the end of the drive was a cluster of maybe five houses. Three of them were a dull beige, peeled paint and sagging roofs. One was in a little better shape, a soft egg-yolk yellow with sky-blue doors. It looked almost nice, if it weren’t for the tree collapsed against it, crushing half the roof and a crumpled looking car beneath. Then, behind them all, was the monstrosity they’d come to visit.

It was... decorated... with too many colours to count. Bright red doors and windows were smudged with paint, the panes themselves too greasy and dusty to see through. Junk covered the yard, aside from a dead-straight clear path right up the middle, a long, deep, winding gouge in the path from the road to the door. Dave looked at him, then the houses around them.

“Are we... in the right place?” he cautioned. John couldn’t help the smirk that twitched at his lips. Somehow, this hesitant reaction was even better than the outright surprise he’d been expecting.

“Welcome to Redglare’s,” John announces, pulling the truck to a complete stop. There’s a heavy silence as Dave takes in the sight in front of him. He looks sceptical, but John can’t think of how one might explain the experience of talking to Terezi Pyrope to someone, so he simply gestures for Dave to follow him out of the truck and up the drive.

At the door, John ignores the doorbell and knocks while Dave looks around, hesitant to even step up to the porch. He seemed unnerved but not exactly scared, sniffing the air lightly and narrowin his eyes. It reminded John of a nervous cat. The door opened quickly, revealing a tall woman. She had frazzled dark hair and milky eyes, and was wearing a pair of boxers and a t-shirt, despite the late hour. A bright red and pilled blanket was tied around her shoulders, fashioned into a hooded cloak. In one hand she holds a red-and-white cane, in the other, a sword.

Dave makes a strangled noise and takes a step back, Terezi turning her head towards him.

“Aw, don’t worry,” she says, voice low and rough, like she’d just woken up. She raises the sword up, and with a decisive swing, hurls it off into the junk around her house. She turns back to John and sniffs, deep and long. When she was satisfied, she grinned with white, glinting teeth that were perhaps just a touch too sharp. “John! I was wondering when you’d drag your sorry ass back here.”

John made a vague noise of affirmation, thankfully not having to force himself to smile. Conversations with Terezi tended to either make him tired or angry. He would stop coming to see her, but he was yet to find anyone else that had her talent of inexplicably knowing what he needed to know. He didn’t know if the knowledge was obtained legitimately, illegally or magically, but he was sure as hell never going to ask.

She waves him inside and John turns to Dave, stretching out his hand. Surprisingly, Dave takes it without hesitation, only a slight frown marring his features.

Inside was as much as he remembered. It was clearer than outside, but the colours worked no better, and it wasn’t much cleaner. Though there was less junk, there was no sign that she’d actually cleaned since the last time John had visited.

Beside the door was a light switch with a hand-written sign. “Turn it on if you need, turn it off when you leave.” He fiddles with it, adjusts it to sit more securely on the wall before flicking the switch below. Had his handwriting always been so scribbly? Dave blinks in the sudden harsh light and John squeezes his hand in apology. It was cool and dry in his palm, and though he knew the strength it contained, it felt that if he clenched his fist it would break.

Terezi walks ahead of them, her blanket-cape dragging on the floor behind them. The house was rather dusty, but where she walked the floor was clean. If he looked around he could see the familiar dust-free paths that she walked, the dust occasionally pockmarked by the end of her cane. By following those clear paths one could conceivably map the path she walked each day.

She leads them to the back room, John following the tack tack of her cane on the wooden floors. At the back of the house was an odd, circular room that she pushed into, a curtain in place of a door. He holds it open for Dave as they step in.

It might’ve been bright and airy, if it wasn’t for the heavy tapestries and drapes pinned over the walls and windows. Against one side of the wall was an impossibly precarious stack of paperbacks, and along the other side, a series of tables and desks, covered in rubbish and art supplies, as well as several open books, the pages blotchy with colour. In the middle was a circular table, with three chairs around it. In front of one was a glass with a dark liquid, but it was otherwise empty. Terezi took one seat and waved her hands, waiting for them to sit as well.

John made to sit in front of the glass, only for Terezi to whip her foot out and kick his shin.

“Shit, Jesus Terezi!” he said, leaping back.

“That’s not for you!” she snaps, turning her head to look directly at Dave. It took almost a minute to convince Dave to sit, Terezi watching on silently. When he finally does, she leaned towards him, pushing the glass closer. “Don’t worry, it’s human. Fresh, too!” Immediately John realises the cup was full of blood. She turned to John again. “Aren’t you going to introduce us?”

John exchanges a glance with Dave. “Uh, this is Dave,” he says. “Dave, this is Terezi Pyrope. She’s a...”

“A seer,” Terezi supplies, grinning wide. “A blind prophet, if you will.” It was something Terezi described herself as often, but John had never been able to figure out if she was serious. She did seem to be able to see things she shouldn’t have, and know things she couldn’t, but it was never anything unexplainable.

“Nice to meet you,” Dave said with obvious apprehension. He shot John a sharp look, a look that made John feel guilty for not at least trying to prepare him for the woman in front of them.

“So,” Terezi continues, ignoring Dave’s response. “What do you need this time?”

“Who says I need anything?” John says, semi-playful. “Can’t a guy say hello to an old friend?”

“Is that what we are now?” she said with a gregarious laugh. “At least you seem to be over your moping. Is this about the Strider clan still? Because I’ve told you, that’s not something I know.”

“Kind of,” John says, sparing a side-long look at Dave. He was cautiously sniffing the glass, looking tempted. “It’s more vague than that.”

“Vague comes with the territory Johnny-boy. Spit it out before I kneel over and die.” She cackles putting her cane over her knees and leaning back.

John mirrors her, leaning back in his seat. “It has... been brought to my attention that killing the head Strider might be more difficult than I thought.” Beside him, Dave’s ears twitch, still fiddling with the glass. Terezi looks at him with interest.

“Well, about time,” she says airily. “I’ve been trying to tell you that from the beginning.” He groans as she bends over the table, placing her elbow on it and pulling up one of her short sleeves.

Even though he knew she couldn’t seem him, John pulls a face. “Terezi, I know, you don’t have to—“

“One of them bit me once!” she declares. Dave at least seemed to be intrigued. “I got away with just this scar,” she says, flexing her arm and slapping at the skin of her shoulder, marred by slight white lines of a puffy scar, much like Dave’s. He watched as Dave brought his fingers to his forearm, mimicking her with little awareness of his own movements, if the glass-y eyed look he was giving her was anything to go by.

“Please, Terezi,” he says, reaching out to stop Dave’s movements, grabbing his hand and gently pulling it away. “I know. Can you please just tell me what I can do to make up for that. Something to help me.”

Suddenly, Terezi looks much more serious. “I already gave you that offer, John,” she said solemnly. “And if I remember right, you threw a right tantrum and stormed out of here because you wouldn’t listen past the words ‘witch coven’.”

John winced. She was right, of course, but... “Things are different now,” he insisted.

“So now you’re interested in what I have to say,” she mocks.

“Terezi,” Dave says suddenly, interrupting their light bickering. “I want to know how to kill him. I’ll do anything, I don’t care about where the help comes from. I’ll listen, I will,” he says, utterly genuine. Even Terezi couldn’t hold back the reflexive softening of her features at his pleading. She doesn’t reply right away, but John knew she wasn’t going to turn him down. He keeps his own mouth shut, knowing she was far more likely to help Dave and his genuine pleas than she was going to let go of John’s past snobbery.

“Alright,” she said, tapping her fingers on her cane and twisting her mouth in thought. “Alright,” she repeats, swinging her cane out and standing, coming to her decision. She walks to the piles of books, running her free hand along their tattered spines, face pinched in thought. She trails them up and down, pausing on some, skimming past others without any outwardly visible way of telling them apart. She eventually rests her hand on a faded brown volume that may have once been orange at the bottom of the pile.

For a moment, Dave looks like he wants to say something, but John tugs on his hand and shakes his head. If they distracted her, it might be hours before she got her ‘mojo’ back enough to continue.

Deftly, she yanks the book out and tucks it under her arm. The pile wobbles but doesn’t fall, knocking into stacks beside it and sending a gut-clenching ripple across the mess. It settles without collapsing, John letting out a half-laugh, half-sigh in relief. She returns to the table and drops the book open in front of her seat, not sitting but simply hovering over it. She flicks through the pages with ease, licking her finger occasionally and sometimes pausing, as if reading. Finally, she stops and sit again, pulling out a fat red marker from somewhere unseen on her person. She furiously scribbles, flicks a page, then scribbles some more. After several minutes, she tears out the pages and hands them to John silently.

As soon as John’s hand touches the pages, Terezi springs back to life again, a smile splitting her face and her posture loosening. “Well then, that was easier than it usually is,” she remarks. “Maybe because I’ve done it before,” she adds sharply to John. He ignores her, leafing through the pages she’d given him. The pages were covered in blocked out text, some letters and words left unmarked for him to read. Terezi hands him a pencil and he begins to write.

After a few minutes, he’s left with a relatively short message.

ANKENY WITCH COVEN, IOWA

It’s followed by an address which he assumes to be either of the coven itself or a member who can help him. He takes a deep breath and forces himself to fold the papers up and place them carefully in his jacket pocket. “Thanks, Terezi,” he says, retaking Dave’s hand and squeezing it, thanking him silently in turn.

“Hey, as long as you don’t throw it back in my face a week from now, that’s thanks enough for me. My payment can be never seeing your face again,” she cackles, standing abruptly.

“Sure, whatever,” he says drily, following suit.

“Thanks, Terezi,” Dave says, standing up as well. In the time between his plea and now, he’s drunk some of the blood and was looking more lively by the second.

“Aw, shucks,” she said wryly, hitting him gently on the calves with her cane, then whacking John much harder across the knees. He yelps and bites his lip, trying to resist the urge to jump up and down and crackling pain blossoms from his kneecaps. Dave, the bastard, has the audacity to laugh along with Terezi.

“You kind of deserved that,” Dave pointed out.

“You’re damn right he did! I like you kid, you can come back. Leave your boy toy behind though, and I’ll tell you about all the shit he’s put me through over the last year. Asshole comes to me with all his problems for years, drops off the planet, then comes back and rips up some of my shit!” She swings at him again, John jumping back and protesting loudly. “Glad to see he isn’t stewing anymore. Not so glad to see him again at all.”

“You can’t see, full stop, Terezi,” John says, dragging Dave towards the door.

“I can see you’re a little bitch,” she snaps back, waving her cane at them both. “Now get out of my house!”

Back in the truck, John takes a moment to collect himself, rubbing his knees, and his ankle where Terezi had managed one last hit as he’d paused to turn off the light. Dave had tried to act concerned between biting back laughs, but they both knew he’d deserved it, and that she hadn’t hit him nearly as hard as she could’ve.

When the throbbing died down enough, John extracted the pages and looked them over once more. When he’d first found Terezi through one of his dad’s former contacts, he’d been ready to strike her off as a kook with a gimmick and had very nearly left to never return. But, surprise surprise, when her intel had proven to be solid, he’d reconsidered his stance.

The contact had been former for a reason, however. His dad had been a hard-line traditionalist when it came to their profession, and had been serious when he said that magic had no business mixing with hunting. When this particular contact had strayed too close to the magical side of things, his dad had been quick to cut him off. Really, John had stumbled upon him and Terezi by accident.

He wondered now if his dad would be ashamed to see what his life had come to. It was true enough that his views had softened in the last few months of his life, enough that he would have considered himself friends with various magic users and supernatural beings, but... John doesn’t know if that would have extended to the situation he found himself in now.

He spares a glance at Dave, finding him looking back at him curiously.

“Iowa, huh?” he says, gesturing to the papers John was still clutching. John nods jerkily and puts them back in his jacket.

“Yeah, looks like it. I guess we have a few more stops before Texas, then.”

Dave looks serious again, turning his head to gaze out the windshield. “Yeah,” is the only comment he makes before John starts the truck again, pulling back out onto the road


	13. Lunch Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dave goes out for lunch. Jade has a crisis of faith.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry its been so long! i havent abandoned this, dont worry. updates may be infrequent, but i hope you enjoy this chapter

After their visit with Terezi, Dave felt something strange bubbling in his stomach. The encounter had been weird, to put it mildly, but Dave felt nothing but joy when thinking back on it. He’d met someone new, in the light of day. Someone who knew what he was and didn’t think twice about it. Someone who had gotten him a drink and helped both him and John on their now suddenly-conjoint mission. It left him reeling. He wouldn’t go so far as to say that he considered Terezi a friend after such a brief and surreal visit, but he certainly wouldn’t turn down the opportunity to go see her again.

John didn’t seem to think much of it. It apparently hadn’t occurred to him that this was a big step in Dave’s un-life. Not that Dave was blaming him. Being out and about and seeing humans was so engrained in his daily life it would’ve been unusual for him to be thinking too much about it, really. But Dave himself? He couldn’t stop thinking about it. When John tucked himself into bed that night, it had been all Dave thought about while he slept. He’d flicked blankly through the pages of a magazine while his mind drifted, coming back again and again to the experience of being known, of being seen (in the abstract sense), and being, at least somewhat, understood.

These thoughts swirled in his head as they drove down sightless roads with endless stretches of flat, empty lands. John was singing along to a 2003 addition of ‘Now That’s What I Call Music’, Dave staring distractedly out the window. In the pause between two songs, Dave turns to John.

“Let’s go to lunch,” he says, declaring it to the truck like he was announcing the death of a king— with mighty importance.

John glances at him sparingly, eyes dragging back to the road. “Already?” he says, eyebrows arched in surprise. “Did you not get enough last night? We could stop earlier tonight, I guess, but—“

“No, no,” Dave says quickly. “Not that kind of lunch.” He shifts in his seat, starting to feel excited, just the anticipation of pitching the idea to John exhilarating. “Human lunch. Normal lunch. Like, in a diner or something. With fries and pop and milkshakes after. Lunch.”

John looks at him in surprise. “Really? But... won’t it suck being stuck in the car?”

“I want to come in. With you,” Dave insists, and John finally seems to catch on. He makes a low noise, pulling over after a moment’s silence.

“Really?” he says again, this time turning to look at Dave fully, taking in his hesitant smile.

“Yes, really John,” Dave says, rolling his eyes exaggeratedly. “You offered once,” he adds.

John nods and holds up his hands. “Yeah, no, definitely, I’m just surprised. You always seemed so...”

“Scared?” Dave offered.

“Disinterested,” John says instead, charitably. 

Dave turns his palms up and sits back in his seat, trying to play it off like it was no big deal.

After a beat or two of silence, John taps his fingers on the wheel and purses his lips. “But you are scared?” he asks, glancing back over at Dave.

“I guess,” Dave admits. “The only interaction I’ve had with humans in forever has been as food and...”

“Me?”

“...and now Terezi.”

John looks thoughtful. “Not a great selection,” he says, rubbing the back of his neck. Dave doesn’t say anything, just shrugs again and picks at a loose thread in his jeans. “Will you want to eat? Human food, I mean.”

“Probably not,” Dave muses. “I mean, I just want to, like, see the world again, you know? Interact with people, with humans, and just, exist a little more.” Anxiety bubbles in his stomach. It felt as though that with each beat his heart leaned in a different direction. Fluctuating back and forth between reintegration and isolation. Only the fact that he’d brought it up to John, putting the idea into the world, stopped him from forgetting about it entirely.

“Yeah,” John says, sounding distracted. “Yeah, no, we can do that. Lunch. And I guess... proper lunch for you afterwards?”

Dave thumbs at an ear and makes a non-committal gesture. “Not if you have to drive.”

John gives him a lopsided smile that makes his stomach do a triple summersault, putting his earlier nerves to shame. “It might be nice to just hang out for a while. Take a break, yeah?”

All Dave manages is a mumbles agreement, staring out the window.

The truck rumbles back to life and John pulls them back out onto the highway, looking a little more cheerful. If any man could be won through his stomach, Dave thought, it was John. Those feelings that had been stewing in his stomach over the last few days bubbled, as if to remind him that they were there. He didn’t know exactly what they meant, and he wasn’t sure if he was uncomfortable or not with the idea of having them at all, let alone for John.

As Dave stewed, John navigated them off the highway and nudged them closer to a populated area— an area that might have a decent place to eat. So far the fanciest place they’d eaten at had been a gas station with surprisingly good ready-made sandwiches. According to John, that is. Dave only snacked occasionally on a Twizzler or sipped some soda. From what he could tell, anything he ate just sat in his stomach, undigested, and the idea was more than a little gross. He hadn’t eaten enough to find out what happened when he was full.

It was still early when John settled on an unassuming diner-truck-stop combo a little ways outside some town in Arizona. Seeing such a place in daylight wasn’t inherently strange— Dave had lingered outside many normal places in his time as a vagrant vampire —but something about seeing it and knowing he was about to go inside was uncanny.

John takes them around the side and parks in the shade of the building. Despite the season, it was still warm, but Dave didn’t know if that was unusual or not for the area.

The engine cut out and Dave shifted nervously.

“Let’s get you ready,” John says, voice chipper, compensating for how dour Dave looked. He doesn’t move straight away, watching Dave with his hands paused on the wheel. “You know we can still leave, if you don’t want to do this,” he offers generously. “This is all for you.”

Dave takes the opportunity to seriously think. John, to his credit, waits patiently, without fidgeting or looking impatient, which Dave knew was a serious feat for him. That was what eventually convinced him— knowing that John was by his side and doing his best to support him. Even if there was guilt mixed in from what had happened, Dave knew that John was genuine. He was genuinely interested in Dave’s well-being, in letting him be happy. He hadn’t said it, but it was loud and clear from the little gestures designed to make things better for him. The entertainment he was provided at night, the small ways he changed his driving habit to make room for what Dave needed, the gentle touches and check-ins.

“I’m sure,” Dave said, giving John a soft, genuine smile. It was reflected back tenfold in the high-beam grin John gives him in return.

“Here, then,” he says, leaning over to the glove box and pulling out the cheap pair of sunglasses they’d bought and Dave had almost forgotten about. “For your eyes. Give me a second—“ John passes off the glasses, then hops out of the truck entirely. When he comes back, it’s with a beanie, which he also hands to Dave. “For your ears,” he says. It was obvious he was proud of having considered all this, so Dave placates him with a laugh.

“Good job, Mr. Smart Man,” he says, pushing the glasses up his nose. “I look like a sick hipster.”

“You don’t look sick,” John protests, but they both, surely, had to know that Dave’s desaturated skin wasn’t natural. “Unless you mean the good kind. Like, ‘sick, bro!’” he adds, a grin breaking his semi-serious face. Dave snorts and shakes his head, watching as John jumps from the cab once again.

John pops back into view on Dave’s side, opening the door and offering a hand. It lingers longer than is strictly necessary, but John doesn’t seem to notice. He was fumbling with his keys, locking the door, his hand only slipping away when he reaches up to test the handle. His human warmth leaves traces on Dave’s palm, ticklish lines where his calloused fingers dragged over his cool skin. Dave doesn’t have nearly enough time to savour it before John is pulling him away, by his elbow this time.

It was still relatively early, which meant the diner was only sparsely occupied. It was a traditional kind of diner that Dave hadn’t ever really been in. They hadn’t frequented these when he was a kid, and he hadn’t had much of an opportunity since. The last time he was somewhere even remotely like this was in the days leading up to his death, stopping at pokey little restaurants with his yearbook club friends. Those were more like run-down half-functioning pit stops, where this seemed to be a place locals frequented and worked.

It had charming, squeaky little booths, kitschy tiled floor, erratically decorated walls and an open kitchen behind the bar. They were greeted by a teenaged waitress who invited them to sit anywhere, handing them two thick wads that Dave realised were massive menus.

Dave feels a little disorientated by it all. Even half-empty, it was more humans in one place he had been around in quite some time. Even when feeding, Dave found people out alone or in small groups— never large gatherings, and hardly ever in broad daylight. He especially had avoided being inside. Too great a risk. Cameras, enclosed spaces, hidden doors and nooks and crannies. Being inside a place of business, intending to just sit and talk to another human was a strange novelty.

It wasn’t as anxiety-inducing as Dave had feared, but he still clung to John’s elbow, keeping him grounded and reminding him that he was safe. It was a comforting feeling, even if Dave technically would be the one protecting the if they were attacked.

John chooses a spot, sliding in on one side of the booth. Following suit, Dave slid in next to him, casting about a furtive glance. John started in surprise.

“Not going to sit across from me?” he asked, and Dave blinked at him.

“What, is that a rule?”

John’s smile crept up slowly before splitting his face in its full glory. Staring at it, Dave couldn’t help but think his smile was some kind of great natural beauty. A smile like a geode. His face could be perfectly neutral one moment and cracked open the next to reveal a brilliant glittering beauty inside. Even that didn’t seem entirely accurate. Even when he wasn’t smiling, there was an internal glow. It was more akin to a waterfall, beautiful in its own right, hiding something glitteringly brilliant behind it.

Dave must’ve been staring for too long, because John looks away, seeming somewhen abashed. Dave quickly looks back down at his own menu, shifting in embarrassment.

“You sure you don’t want to eat anything?” John asks, back to something closer to normal.

“I’m sure,” Dave says, eyes scanning the lines and lines of food. “I’m happy with my usual.”

The waitress reappears with a pitcher of water and some cutlery and cups. “Can I start you with a drink, gentlemen?” she asks, seeming unperturbed that they were squeezed together on one side of the booth.

“Black coffee for me, two sugar, and an apple juice for him, please,” John replies, shooting her a charming smile. When she departs, Dave shoots John a look. “What? It’ll look weird if you get absolutely nothing,” John says defensively. Dave was more annoyed by the smile. Was he allowed to be? He leans against John’s side, somewhat pathetically hoping that even with all these other humans around, John would keep paying attention to him. He was embarrassingly used to having John’s entire attention, and the idea that John might prefer to hang around other humans made his strangely uncomfortable.

The waitress returns with their drinks and takes John’s order, whisking the menus away again when he was done. John turns to him and presses the tips of his fingers to Dave’s wrist gently. “Okay?”

Dave nods, a smile tugging at the corner of his lips. “Not as bad as I thought it would be,” he admits. John returns his soft smile and turns to his coffee, his hand leaving those strange pin-prick points behind on Dave’s skin.

Dave really wasn’t lying either. It wasn’t all that bad. The atmosphere was warm and calm, an array of breakfast smells lingering in the air. It wasn’t too loud either, saving his over-sensitive ears from strain. “How about you? Been missing proper food?”

“Maybe a little,” John says, sitting back comfortably.

Dave picks up his apple juice and took a sip. His fangs clicked against the glass, cups not exactly designed with big pointy teeth in mind. The juice was cool and sweet, and exactly what he needed. After a moment, he puts it back down, drawing his fingers through the condensation. “The witches,” he starts, glancing back at John. “What do we need from them?”

John pushes his mug around on the table, lips pursed. “I’m... not sure. That’s kind of what my argument with Terezi was about.” He says after a while. “All she knew was that I needed to see them. She couldn’t really say why, that’s not how her, hm, ‘talents’ work.” He stops pushing his mug and stares into it. “All I really know is that Terezi is positive that without whatever they can give me, it won’t be possible to even get to the head of the snake, so to speak, let alone kill him.”

Dave considers this. “What made you change your mind?”

John throws him a look that made Dave feel like he ought to already know that. Before Dave has much time to retort, a plate piled high with breakfast food arrives and lands in front of John. The waitress leaves a half-full pot of coffee on the table and leaves again with a smile.

John begins digging in, Dave half-annoyed that his question was being avoided. If he changed his mind because Dave had softened his view on the supernatural, he should just say so.

“You’re a big baby,” Dave comments, resting an elbow on the table.

“Shud ub,” John replies.

The longer they stayed there, easily talking quietly between themselves, John eating and Dave sipping occasionally at his juice, the more Dave felt like he’d had no reason to be nervous. The only thing stopping him from berating himself was the very real thought that he’d been isolated from humanity for almost six years. That was over a third of his life. Anyone would be nervous trying to reintegrate after so long.

When the juice was finished, Dave had nothing to do but observe. Though he could’ve looked around them, he found himself being dragged back again and again to John’s profile. When he ate like a starved man, when he talked to the waitress, when he gulped at his coffee and panted when it was too hot. That feeling of being in trouble, of falling off the deep end, that feeling never left Dave. He wasn’t dense enough to miss what it meant, but he knew he would deny it for as long as he could. This wasn’t something he wanted to get mixed up in. Things were already hard enough without messy feelings getting caught up in it all.

John finishes eating and pays, and as they leave the diner he grabs Dave’s hand, seemingly without sparing a thought. He leads Dave back to the truck, and Dave feels like he can hardly breathe.

Trouble with a capital T.

º

It was frustrating when the hunt led you back to where you began.After running all the way up to Washington, Jade and the pack had quickly realised how cold the trail was. He’d been here, that was for sure, but never long enough to have his scent seep into the ground. He was wandering, pack-less, unmoored. At some point, his scent mixed with another and never became untangled. One would leave and the other would follow, culminating in a single place that stank of blood and gunpowder, before separating again. They twirled around each other in an intricate and violent dance.

That alone made it hard to follow the trail, but what was even harder was the fact that at some point, it doubled back and disappeared. A car? Refusing to lose the trail when they’d come this far, they refocused on the second person. The human. They found the room they were sure he’d slept in, and those with keener noses than her’s managed to identify the smell of his car.

Such a feat was always impressive to Jade, who favoured her eyes over her nose. How her pack-brother could tell one car from another was beyond her, no matter how humble he was.

This car, apparently, was very distinctive. The human that drove it no doubt spent a lot of time in it. More time than was usual for a human. It made his scent and the car’s almost one and the same. They were so intertwined, that once Jade noticed it, she too could smell it.

The trail went back the way they came. They almost lost it in places— where it had rained, or lots of cars passed through, or something with a much more powerful smell was nearby. Still they persisted, though progress was much slower than they would’ve liked.

Jade was worried. The human had smelt like a hunter. Metal and sulphur and herbs and potions. She’d smelt the garlic and the woody scent of a white pine stake. She wanted to hurry, to confirm the vampire she hunted was still alive, but tracking couldn’t be rushed. If they made a mistake, the scents would only fade and degrade further. It was already hard enough to keep track of him.

As they doubled back the way they came, Jade quickly grew frustrated. It was like a supercut of all the places they’d been. The hunter’s hub, the Klamath forest. Where were they going? Why were they together?

In her two-leg form, she kept an eye out as one of her pack-sisters asked around the hub for more information they might’ve missed. Jade’s hand strayed to the leather cord around her wrist, the tuft of fur gathered there. She had to find him, she had to repay her.

All they managed to find out about at Salt Lake City was that their prey had been through and had purchased a few tokens. Almost useless. All it did was confirm that he was a hunter, and one with an active license at that. Not one of the people they’d asked had mentioned a vampire. The few her pack had brought it up to seemed surprised. No, they’d tell them. No, this hunter is a vampire hunter specifically. There were no vampires. That didn’t reassure any of them.

“What do we do?” a pack-mate asked as they met up again at the end of the day.

“We keep looking,” Jade said firmly. “We have no reason to believe he isn’t still alive.”

“But...” one of them said, unsure and nervous. “We haven’t smelt him for days.”

Another pack-mate jumped in. “If he’s with a hunter and alive, they wouldn’t want him to be seen. He’s probably staying in the truck.”

“But why?” another presses.

Jade runs a hand through her shock of hair. “We’ll find out,” she says. “We’ll smell him again. He’s still alive, I can feel it!”

Though not all of them believe the same, as the head of the pack, they trust her.

She is proven right not long later. They smell him again for the first time in a while in a ditch on the side of the road. It smells so bad, they almost miss it. But there’s his scent, thick in the air, soaked in the ground. He’d been there for hours at least.

It’s the first time Jade considers the thought that he’s dead— truly dead.

º

Sitting in the bed of the truck, there’s a moment of hesitation. John’s arm was healed enough to consider drinking from, but the last couple of times Dave had fed had been from his neck. Was that the new normal, or would John want him to go back to his arm now? John seemed to be having a similar thought.

“Maybe we should leave my arm a little longer,” he said, leaning against the back of the cab and gesturing for Dave to come closer on the mattress. “Fully healed over, you know?”

“That could be a while,” Dave says sceptically, scooting to sit next to him. John shrugs. “It’s no big deal,” Dave tries but John rolls his eyes.

“You already don’t get enough,” he points out. “Once a day isn’t nearly enough and you know it. Especially when you take so little.” This time it was Dave’s turn to shrug helplessly. “Stop worrying about it. I told you, if I didn’t want you to, I would say so.”

Dave wasn’t so convinced, but he wasn’t about to refuse to eat. As it was he was feeling bleary and weaker than normal. He still wasn’t back to full strength, and John was right. Once a day from one human wasn’t nearly enough to sustain him from long. Maybe if he was killing and drinking like the Striders did it would be enough, but if he wanted to not be a killer, this would have to do. There just wasn’t another alternative.

So he drinks, and it’s awkward, and John falls asleep quickly afterwards. Dave is left to his own thoughts again.

They were tucked into a dark corner of a pit stop. The only things around were some sparse trees, a small shack that Dave assumed was a bathroom, and a single dusty vending machine. There was a lonely bulb above the bathroom door, surrounded by moths and yet more dust. The place was abandoned and loud with nocturnal wildlife. Which Dave supposed he was part of. It was almost unfair that he was restricted to drinking at night. After feeding, he was so full of energy, and John was so tired. A cruel irony.

Things might be better now, though, Dave thinks. He was loose. He could do what he wanted, work off some of that extra energy.

First he pulls out John’s clunky old laptop and watches a torrented movie. It was fine, entertaining even, but after just ninety minutes the battery life was suffering. He reads a few magazines, then some comics. It wasn’t that he was bored, per se, more that he felt restless. When he was tied up, he made do, counting stars, reminiscing, or otherwise spending his time thinking. The past few weeks had left him all thinked-out and he wanted to exert himself some other way.

When nothing works, he hops from the truck bed and circles around to the dry brush growing just past the cracked pavement. He hunts for a stick— thin and mostly smooth, and as straight as he could get it. He finds one and taps it against the ground. It felt too brittle and insubstantial. Tossing it away, he looks some more.

He eventually finds one and walks out of the brush, weighing it in his hands. It was just a tad too long, but a quick snap had that sorted. Despite how long it took him to find the perfect stick, he puts it down leaning against the truck. A step or two away, he draws himself up.

He starts by stretching. Lunges and squats and whatever other warm-up moves he can remember from so long ago. His muscles loosen and start to warm. It had been so long since he’d done any proper exercise, even before he was tied up in the back of John’s truck. He stretches until he feels loose-limbed and excited.

“En Garde,” he whispers to himself, lunging with his left foot forward. He retreated back from an invisible opponent, adjusted himself, and advanced again. It was hard for him to know what his form looked like, but he tried his best to judge from his reflection in the truck’s windows. He went through the motions, advancing, retreating, lunging, recovering.

It was good to do something so normal, something he hadn’t done since before he was turned. He wondered who had won the fencing competition he’d never turned up for. With his current reflexes and keen senses, Dave has no doubt that he would win if he competed now. He shakes himself out, and turns back to the truck to get his make-shift blade.

Dave almost jumps when he spots John sitting up, glancing around blearily.

“Dave?” he mumbled. “What’re you doing?”

Dave stood up fully, a little embarrassed. “Sorry. Did I wake you?”

John shook his head. “I don’t think so. Bad dream, maybe.” He paused. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Dave said, folding his arms. “I was just... practicing my fencing.”

John perked up at that. “Fencing? Can I see?”

For a moment, he hesitated. Was this embarrassing? He couldn’t really tell. Eventually, he figures that it couldn’t hurt. He wanted to keep practicing, burning off his excess energy, and if he got all embarrassed and shy now, he’d have to stop until John fell back asleep. He finally shrugs. “Yeah, okay.”

He continues where he left off, picking up his stick, taking a few steps away from the truck. He kicked a few stones around to roughly mark out his homemade piste.

He performed a quick, self-conscious salute with the stick, trying to adapt himself to its stiffness and thickness compared to a real blade. “En Garde,” he muttered, taking position.

Trying to envision an opponent for himself, he moves through the techniques he remembers. A riposte following through a parry, lunge, recovery, advancing. He feints and scores a point on his imaginary opponent, letting out a laugh. He’d forgotten how fun fencing was. He retreats back to where he started.

“En Garde!” he says again, launching into a new series of moves, increasing the sharpness, the speed, the confidence. He’s fully in the zone when, after a flick that was perhaps just a little too quick and sharp, his blade snaps with a crack. He jumps back as if the stick itself was his opponent and prepared to disengage before realising what had happened. He splutters out a laugh and does a half-hearted salute with his broken blade. “Good bout,” he says to the other half, lying sadly on the concrete.

Looking back to John, he smiles, shrugging.

John looks more than a little dazzled. “You’re left-handed?”

Dave bursts into laughter, making an odd movement half-way between an affirmative nod and a disbelieving shake. “Yeah, you idiot. I’m left-handed.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks, as always, to sam.  
if anyone thinks they’d like to be a beta reader, let me know. flick me a DM on twitter @big_lixy


	14. Blood & Magic & Blood Magic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John accepts help from an unlikely source.

Colorado passes like a flash. John and Dave’s friendship seemed to have quickly recovered. At least, mostly. There were moments of tension that John was hyper-aware of. Dave excitedly wondering if they would have time to visit the Rio Grande, John shooting the idea down just a touch too sharply for it to be comfortable. After everything that had happened, John was only more anxious to make up for lost time. It seemed terrible to think of what had happened at... what had happened as ‘lost time’, but John felt a particular brand of impatient whenever things took longer than they were meant to. Before he’d set off with Dave in the back, he’d poured over a map to plan his route. They were already taking too many detours, making too many stops. He couldn’t waste any more time on anything that wasn’t completely necessary.

Even as he thinks this, John’s mind casts back to that nighttime scene of Dave fencing. He was so fluid and agile, but strong and sharp. His face had been full of life and passion that surpassed anything he’d ever seen, human or otherwise. Those moments wouldn’t happen if he rushed. Lunch had been great, despite his internal reservations about it. He’d enjoyed the meal, and they’d both been able to talk for an extended period of time without it feeling like walking on eggshells. They’d felt like friends again.

Despite the renewed friendship, John doesn’t stop for anything except to grab something to eat at a station and refuel. They pass through Colorado in no time, John stopping once more at a pit stop. Dave didn’t seem upset, but John still felt gnawing guilt at having denied him.

That night again, Dave agreed to let John watch him fence. It was hard to follow what he was doing, but Dave walked him through some basic moves he was using, explaining some rules and terms. John knew he’d never remember, but he still enjoyed listening to him talk.

“What are actual swords made of?”

Dave dropped out of his stance and leant on the stick, thinking. “Well, I used an épée, which is a little stiffer than some other kinds. It’s still really flexible, and made of steel.” Dave glanced at the stick and shrugged a shoulder. “I had a pretty neat sword back when I was alive, though it wasn’t electric, so I couldn’t use it for competition.”

“Electric?” John said, feeling alarmed. Surely he’d have heard of it if fencing competitions involved teenagers zapping each other with electric swords.

“Electric like it has a button on the end so it knows when the tip touches something,” Dave said, seeming amused. John relaxed slightly, feeling more than a little dumb. “The blade is kind of triangular, and really thin and blunt.” Dave motioned with his hand just how thin it was. “Super light and made a fun swishing noise when you swing it around,” he added with a laugh. He stood up again, swinging the stick around. It did swish, but obviously not like Dave’s sword had, going from the disappointed expression.

“And you actually say En Garde, like in the movies?” John asked, tilting his head.

Dave swung his stick back and forth and made a non-committal sound. “That’s what the stance is called, but I wouldn’t say it, the ref would. Or my trainer.” He jumped into the position that John had gathered was the aforementioned ‘En Garde’. “It literally means ‘on guard’. It’s like ‘ready, set, go’ in that way.”

John yawned, covering his mouth to try and disguise it. Dave dropped out of his stance and smiled lop-sidedly. “You should go to bed. I’ll try not to wake you.”

“No, I want to...” John said, suppressing another yawn. “Yeah, okay. En Garde,” he said, pointing at Dave, snorting with tired laughter when Dave jumped into his stance, both of them grinning at each other.

“We’ll reach the coven tomorrow,” he added, scooting back to sit on the mattress. He pulled off his shirt and replaced it with a sleeping one. “I don’t know what they’ll have for us, but we should be _on guard_, just in case.”

Dave switched from looking serious back into a stupid grin, rolling his eyes. “Of course we should. Go to bed already, you’re so distracting.”

John flapped a hand with barely contained laughter. “Yeah, yeah, I’m going. Try not to hurt yourself.”

“Good night,” Dave said emphatically, turning away.

John couldn’t help but smile to himself as he turned in, for a little while imagining that this was just a normal road trip between friends.

º

The address Terezi had given him lead John into a suburban neighbourhood. There was rows of little houses with tiny lawns and sleepy windows pressed shoulder to shoulder all down the gently curving roads. The particular house they were looking for had a slightly overgrown feel to it. Long grass and wild flowers crowded right up to the paved path which wound around bushes and small trees. It was out of place, but not in a way that suggested it was a witch’s house. Exchanging furtive looks, Dave and John hopped out of the truck and approached the driveway.

The little gate had a sign on it welcoming them in, so they walk straight through. The grasses rustle as a stray cat jumps out and up onto the fence, following them with its eyes. It was a black cat, but John refused to let that bother him. There was no proof that black cats were any more or less bad luck than any other cat. It was ginger cats you had to look out for.

The witch that opened the door wasn’t what John expected. She was short and muscular, with cropped nut-coloured hair and bright golden-brown eyes. She wore a blue hat with floppy ears and a long forest-green coat. John could see feathers and sprigs of some plant sticking out of some of the pockets, and a distracting wriggling mass in one of the breast pockets. Her witches marks were down her chin and over her cheeks, visible when they caught the light as she peered up at them.

She looks at them expectantly, glancing from Dave to John to back again.

“Can I help you?” she says cheerfully, her voice deeper than John would’ve thought. A small meow squeaked from the writhing pocket, a small kitten head popping over the edge.

“Sorry— hi,” John stammers, patting himself down until he found the crumpled note Terezi had given him. “My name’s John, and this is Dave.” John gestures at Dave, who raises a hand in greeting. He holds the note out to the witch. She takes it, holding it between blue-painted nails. “We were directed here by a... seer.”

“Oh!” she says, glancing up from the note. “Sure, of course, come in!” She stepped aside, skimming over the note once again as they came inside.

For a witch’s den, it seemed just like any other house. There was a small front entrance that led off in three directions. Directly ahead, John could see a cozy-looking living room, to his right, a kitchen, and lastly, a staircase and a closed door.

“Come on through. I’m Nepeta,” the witch says, leading them into the living room. “Sorry it’s messy, we weren’t expecting guests.” Nepeta clears the sofa of books and papers, piling them on the coffee table. John sits, Dave following suit. Nepeta herself perched on the edge of the coffee table. Something flicked below her, and John raised his eyebrows in surprise. Curled beneath her, hanging over the edge of the table, was a long, cat-like tail. It flicked again when he glanced at it, but when he looked up, Nepeta was looking at the note again.

“Could I ask who wrote this?” Nepeta asked, handing it back to John.

“A, uh, seer. Her name is Terezi Pyrope.”

Nepeta smiled, but didn’t seem to recognise the name. “Well, what can I do for you?” she said, grinning a little wider and revealing gently sharpened teeth with curling canines. John was growing more nervous by the second.

The kitten that had been obediently quiet in her pocket clambered its way up her chest and onto her shoulder, where the witch gently picked it up and placed on the table. It sniffed around the paper and books, seeming content.

“If you were sent here, I guess that means I can help you! Or, at least, I hope so.” Nepeta shoots them both a sheepish smile, shrugging.

John noticed when she spoke, she wouldn’t meet their eyes, instead looking to the side, or down at their shoes. Often, her hand would raise and pull at her hat, adjusting it back and forth on her head. She was nice, if a little odd, John unsure what to think of her.

“We’re planning to fight a vampire,” John says. “A strong one. I’m... not sure why we were sent here, but I guess you have something that could help us?”

Nepeta looked up and tapped her chin. “Ah! I see why she sent you here, now.” Before John or Dave could ask, she launched into an explanation. “I’m sort of a channel between sources of life. I guess its hard to explain, but here!” she gets up, tail perked up behind her, and gets a notebook and a handful of pens from another table. She comes back and draws a few crude shapes, speaking rapidly. “When a vampire feeds, its partially magical in nature.” Nepeta draws two figures, drawing a line between them, a red blob signifying the blood.

“The blood as a physical thing is important, but the particular magic that makes the undead possible comes from the exchange of life force—“ She adds another line over the first, this one with a heart. “—thats why there’s never really been an artificial alternative to blood. With the right kind of enchantment, I can make a talisman that will stop that transfer when its activated.”

She scribbles a cross over the heart, but not through the blood. “I can stop this vampire from gaining energy and life force from the person who wears it. It would be as if they were drinking water— it’ll nourish their body, but it won’t replenish their life force, meaning that it won’t heal.” She glances up, as if from a daze. “Sorry, I know that was a lot. This is very basically what happens, though there is some crossover between blood and heart.”

“So this’ll make it easier to kill him?” John asks, thoughts already spinning through his brain of how he could use this. Nepeta nods.

“Usually when a vampire feeds, the blood keeps the physical body from failing and the life force, the heart, is what repairs and nourishes it— keeps them alive.” She glanced at Dave and smiled apologetically. “This will stop that from happening, but it won’t stop him from taking blood. This will keep him from healing any wounds using your life force and should hopefully stop you from being sapped of energy.”

“Um,” Dave says suddenly, both Nepeta and John looking over at him. “If I’m drinking from someone, and, you know, taking their life force... is that killing them a little?” Nepeta looked surprised, as if she thought he would’ve known the answer.

“Did your clan not teach you?” she said, quickly looking embarrassed and covering her mouth. Dave shook his head. After a moment of thought, she lowered her hand again. “Sorry. But, to answer the question— no. Humans are always generating life force, this magical energy. It would only be dangerous if they were a fully magical creature, like a fairy. Anything that is part of the natural world, including humans and human-like things, keeps generating life right up until they die.”

“Wait—“ John interjected. “Does that include animals?” Again, Nepeta looked startled.

“Well... yeah.”

Dave and John exchanged a look.

“You know,” Nepeta said, looking unsure. “I have all this information around here... I’m writing a book, you see. A comic, actually, but all this is written out somewhere...” She stands and begins to poke through her things. “I have a whole chapter on vampire physiology, as well as magical physiology..” She disappears upstairs, both John and Dave stunned into silence.

“I could’ve been...” Dave whispers, and John grabs his hand. Nepeta reappears before he had a chance to comfort him, Dave sitting rigid beside him.

“Here!” she said, pressing a sheaf of papers into John’s lap. “Don’t worry, they’re copies.” She added another paper on top and bent over it, quickly scribbling something down. “Here’s my phone number if you have any questions.” She glanced over at Dave with open sympathy. “I’m sorry,” she said softly. “I’ll get on that enchantment. I’ll have to cut you a little, will that be okay?” she directed the last statement at John.

“That’s fine,” he said, almost absently.

Nepeta looks between them, clearly upset. “Look, I don’t know what the circumstances of your transformation were...” she says, slowly kneeling down in front of Dave. “But... You’re welcome to come back here anytime for some vampire guidance.” She glanced over at John, hesitating before she continued. “I have a friend— another vampire. She would be more than happy to help you.”

John didn’t say anything, not wanting to interrupt. He watches Dave give Nepeta a small smile, letting her take one of his hands and squeeze it. When she stands back up, John does the same, getting another sad smile from Dave.

“I’m okay. We should just get this spell done,” he says, seeming to shake himself off, for the time being.

The spell apparently included cutting some kind of rough symbol into the middle of John’s chest. It was incredibly awkward, lying back on the old couch with a cat-witch and a vampire leaning over him, both staring at the bloody mark on his chest, but John could say with confidence he’d been through worse. Hell, the vampire standing over him had done worse to him.

Nepeta presses something over the wound, leaving a stripe of olive-green pigment over the wound, staining the exposed flesh and sinking into the cuts.

“It shouldn’t scar too bad,” She said, wiping her hands off on a towel. “But you’ll be able to see it faintly, even once its healed over. Kinda like a tattoo! Oh, and this is important...” She pointed to a replica of the symbol she’d drawn on a scalp piece of paper before they’d started. “See this open part here? To activate the spell, this part of the circle has to be completed. Just use a biro or something to do it. It’ll deactivate when its broken again. If you wanted to make it permanent—“

“No, that’s fine,” John said, sitting up stiffly. His back ached from lying on the lumpy cushions for so long, and the open cuts on his chest stung. “It doesn’t need to be.”

“Well, if you change your mind, you know where to find me,” she said, packing up her things. 

“Thanks, Nepeta,” Dave said, handing John back his shirt.

“Yeah,” John agreed. “You have no idea how helpful this will be.” Nepeta let out a soft laugh and reached to the first aid kid on the coffee table behind her. She carefully cut a square of gauze and taped it over the sigil before letting John put his shirt back on. “How much do I owe you?” John asked once he was dressed and sitting up.

Nepeta looked a little startled. She grinned a pointy grin again. “I guess you didn’t know, coming from a seer. I don’t charge, so don’t worry about it.”

“Oh,” John said, genuinely surprised. Though he’d never been to a coven or a witch for help before, he’d always just assumed it cost something. The witches’ tents and shops he’d seen at the hub all had A-boards and signs that advertised their prices or trading conditions. “I guess I just assumed...”

“Well,” Nepeta continued with a shrug. “If you were by yourself, maybe. But I don’t charge magicals,” she said, gesturing at Dave. “And it seemed important to him.”

“Oh,” John said again dumbly. He watched Nepeta and Dave exchange some sort of secret smile, something passing between them that John, as a human, couldn’t hope to understand. “Right, yeah. Thanks regardless.”

“Of course, any time.”

After a a brief discussion with Nepeta about care and use of the sigil, they finally depart. The cuts on his chest didn’t hurt nearly as much as John thought they would, and they completely paled in comparison to the initial sharp pain of a vampire bite— the rough ones, from all those months ago.

While John checked their gear, Dave had his nose stuck in the stack of papers Nepeta had given him, flipping through them and examining the little doodles that dotted the margins and the backs of papers. One of them looked a lot like the one she’d drawn for them to explain how feeding worked, but a little neater, and coloured in.

“I’m kind of stuffed,” John sighed, swinging into the cab. Dave glanced up from his papers. “Do you want to just find a motel and chill for the rest of the day? I need to plan for what comes next.”

Dave was more than happy to, eager to get properly into all the juicy information he now had. John bit back a twang of annoyance, followed by a flush of guilt. He was happy for Dave’s discoveries, and for his new ally, well and truly, he was. But there was a twinge of something else. Dave now had somewhere to go after his time with John. He had a place to return to, where they would welcome him. John wasn’t his only safe harbour anymore. That was great, especially if something happened to John in Texas, but it almost John feel... less special. It was absolutely absurd, and John hated that he felt it, but he couldn’t deny it was there.

As best he could, he shook that feeling off, aiming his eyes straight on the road. He drove back out of the little neighbourhood and back to the main roads, then out of town. Despite himself, he wanted to get a little more travelling done before resigning himself to a day of doing nothing with Dave. He was tired, he wanted to rest, but his impatient side wouldn’t let him stop without at least getting something done that day. The sigil didn’t feel like enough of an excuse to take a day off.

A little ways on, John is forced to pull into the next motel he sees. He was yawning at the wheel and rubbing at his eyes. He’d had a late night, driven all morning, then had a lot of information dumped on him. He couldn’t be blamed for being tired.

He booked a room, wifi and breakfast included, and collapsed on the bed as soon as they entered. Dave kicked off his shoes at the door and stretched, John’s laptop under one arm. He sat on the other side of the bed, booting it up.

“Okay,” he started, typing in John’s login details. “Where to next?”

“Well,” John mumbled, rolling onto his stomach. “I got the weapons and potion ingredients. I’ve checked in with a few contacts, we went and saw Terezi... did what Terezi advised...” he stopped for a moment, something cold squirming in his stomach. “I guess its time to go to Texas.”

They both sit still and silent for a long while. Neither of them know what to say or do.

“Surely those weapons you got at the hub won’t be enough...” Dave ventures. As much as John would like to put off the inevitable for Dave, he knows he can’t. He shakes his head. “Well,” he tries again. “We’ve been driving hard for a few weeks. You should take some time off to recover, right?”

John cocked his head, catching the anxiety and desperation in Dave’s eyes. He was just as nervous and unsure, but he didn’t want to admit that. He didn’t want to give Dave a foothold to try and talk him out of this. This was his mission, he’d been working on it for almost a year now. He couldn’t let it go. But...

“Yeah...” he said quietly. “I guess a few days rest wouldn’t be so bad,” he ventured. Dave’s shoulders visibly relaxed, and he sat back against the pillows.

“Yeah,” he repeated. “A few days. Good, that’s good.” Looking a lot less tense, Dave went back to typing on John’s laptop, a slight smile playing at his lips. John’s stomach flipped some more. He was giving too much, letting Dave coax too many concessions out of him. He couldn’t let himself be convinced off this road. He had to keep going.

“Just for a few days,” he stressed, sitting upright. Dave looks back at him, his smile turning sad.

“Yeah. Just a few days. I get it.” He looked so defeated that John’s heart couldn’t help the lurching squeeze it gave. “I know I can’t convince you otherwise.”

More awake now, John rolled onto his back and sat up. They sit in silence for a moment, Dave staring blankly at the screen, John staring blankly at Dave’s profile. Dave stirs, causing John to blink and look away.

“What was Texas like?” John asked, Dave shifting again. “As a kid, I mean. Before the vampire stuff.”

Dave’s hands dropped from the keyboard, tilting his head back and pursing his lips. “Weird, I guess,” he admitted. “When I was young, we lived in a really shitty apartment. I had to share a room with my sister and my uncle. My mom wasn’t around much. Her shitty boyfriend looked after us, mostly.” Dave closed the laptop, fidgeting with the case as he spoke. “She got her big break though. Suddenly she had money, and an actual house, and food in the fridge. The three of us moved out, and we all had a room each in this way-too-big house. She had her own lab, and me and Rose got to go to a nice school...”

“Rose?” John gently probed when Dave didn’t continue.

“My twin. Although,” Dave laughed bitterly. “She probably isn’t much of a twin anymore. Not after this long.” For a moment, Dave didn’t continue, rubbing the back of his neck. “I got to start my transition, get top surgery, buy a whole new wardrobe and all that. It was pretty good, you know?” he trailed off, looking distant. “I don’t know,” he finally said. “What was your childhood like?”

John wanted to push, but he knew what came next. The vampires, the years away from his family being brainwashed, the months with John. He shuffled back to lean against the pillows. “It was always just me and dad,” he said. “He was always out working. I didn’t know what he did, really. I thought he was just an office worker or something. I was never allowed in his office, and sometimes he’d be off weeks at a time.

“When I was thirteen he told me what he actually did.” John paused, his heart tight and heavy. It was the first time in a long time he’d talked about his dad. It was easier than it had been, but it was still painful. He swallowed down the lump in his throat and continued. “He gave me a choice. I could start training too, or I could go live with my grandma and forget about the whole thing,” John laughed, just as bitterly as Dave had. “I was thirteen, of course I wanted to hunt monsters. I didn’t want to have to leave home and go live upstate with grandma, it was a totally loaded question.” Dave pressed his knee to John’s thigh, and John continued. “So I start training. I don’t really learn anything magical until I’m sixteen. I drop out of mainstream school and get tutored at home or at the local division once I turn seventeen. Go on my first hunt at eighteen...”

“Seems too young,” Dave said softly. John couldn’t help but agree.

“He died a little over a year ago. Surprisingly, lung cancer.” Dave doesn’t laugh with him.

“I’m sorry, John.”

“It’s okay,” John says quickly. “It’s just... still recent. We had a complicated relationship, I guess. Resented him a little for not telling me everything and kinda forcing me into this life so young for a while.” Dave hesitantly touched his cold fingertips to the back of John’s hand. Hungry for comfort, John turned his hand, winding them together and giving his hand a squeeze.

“Thanks for telling me,” Dave says after a respectful moment of silence.

John turned to him with a warm smile. “Yeah. Same to you.”

Another long moment of nothing passes between them, sitting on the scratchy motel bed, staring at the opposite wall. Lost in their own thoughts.

“So it’s really time to go to Texas?” Dave says softly.

“Yeah.”

“I’m scared shitless of that place,” he admits freely.

John laughs. “Me too.”

“We don’t have to go,” Dave says, turning to look at John, pulling on his hand, trying to get him to look back.

“I’m sorry. I do.”

“Do you have to, or do you just not know how you would live with yourself if you stopped?” Dave asked sharply.

“Both,” John said back, too tired to really fight. “If I don’t do this, everything would’ve been for nothing. This was the big job my dad was fighting for. This was what he wanted to do. No one else will continue what he started, so I have to finish it.”

“Maybe they won’t finish it because they know its suicide.”

“And I don’t?” Dave pursed his lips, clearly distressed. “You don’t have to come, Dave.”

“And let you get yourself killed? I’m not a monster.”

John squeezed Dave’s hand again, smiling faintly. “You sure aren’t. I’m sorry, but you won’t be able to change my mind.”

A frown marred Dave’s features. “I know, but I had to try.”

“Thanks for caring,” John replied.

It was Dave’s turn to scoff, turning away again. “Unfortunately, I care too much.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks as always to Sam <3  
I’m slowly going through and trying to edit out typos and add clarity to earlier chapters, please bear with me ٩( 'ω' )و


	15. Creation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dave makes something new.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> been looking forward to this chapter for a long time

Putting his fears of Texas well aside, Dave was looking forward to the next few days. In preparation for the upcoming days of rest, the remainder of the day was spent discussing what they were going to do with all their free time. It was the first time Dave felt as though they really were two friends on a road trip across the country, taking a break for a while after a few bumps in the road. Dave wondered aloud about different tourist-y places they could visit while John planned out trips to the mall to get Dave a few changes of clothes and the shampoo he liked. They were both surprisingly good at pushing aside the very real fact that they were simply delaying the inevitable. Some part of Dave hoped that with enough stalling, John would change his mind and it would all turn into a real friendly road trip. It was pure fantasy, and John’s nightly chore of whittling down stakes made that perfectly clear. The other marred part was the problem of Dave’s feeding.

After Nepeta’s revelation that vampires could drink animal blood, Dave felt as though the world had been tilted upside down, shaking him out into a completely different reality. All his un-life, he’d been told that the only way to survive was to drink the blood of humans. That one fact had been hammered into him as an indisputable fact that he couldn’t argue with. This was the one thing he thought he’d learnt in his time in the den with the Strider clan. Now, he didn’t know what to do with himself.

He held out as long as possible, not asking for blood that evening, not wanting to mar the moment with his anxieties. However, when it came nearer and nearer to night, as they settled down, Dave couldn’t help it anymore. He was parched. He wouldn’t make it through the night if he didn’t drink something, and it was tearing him apart.

“John,” Dave said, his voice just as sluggish as the rest of him.

John looked up from some kind of paste he was making at the small kitchenette. “You okay?” he asked, putting down the knife he’d been using.

“I’m really thirsty,” Dave admitted.

For a moment, John didn’t seem confused, wiping his hands off on his jeans and coming over to the bed with a half-smile. Then, he noticed Dave’s distress. “Hey,” he said, touching Dave’s shoulder, a frown pulling at his features. “It’s okay, you can drink now. That can wait until morning,” he said, gesturing at the paste he’d been working on.

Dave shook his head. “It’s not that,” he said miserably. “How can I continue to drink from you when I know...”

Comprehension coloured John’s face. “Oh,” he said, biting a lip. “Right, yeah.” John sat next to Dave, staring into his lap, lip curled as he seemingly thought hard about something. “Well...” he started. “I don’t know what kind of animal life is around here,” he said. “And I don’t know how hard they will be to find. So how about, for tonight, we just do what we always do?”

Then it was Dave’s turn to look concerned. “I thought you didn’t like it,” he said quickly. “Shouldn’t I become, what, a vampire vegetarian? Wouldn’t that be, morally, the right thing to do?”

“Sure, maybe,” John said, somewhat dismissively. “But I’m a consenting adult, and I said it was okay, so there’s nothing wrong with it.” John pulled his legs up on the bed and scooted further up it, tugging at Dave’s sleeve to get him to follow. He did, willingly. “It’s not like it’s that bad.”

“You always seemed to think it was,” Dave pointed out.

“That was when it was against my will,” John retorted. “Besides,” he said. “I’m allowed to change my mind and be more mature or whatever.”

“This isn’t about being mature,” Dave insisted. “It’s about what you want. I can’t drink from you now that I know there’s a better option.”

John made an exasperated noise. “Weren’t you listening? This is just for tonight. We can talk about the logistics of you drinking animal blood in the morning, right? But for now, I’m your best option. I’m also an animal, you know!”

The fact that John was so glib now took Dave aback. All this time, he’d made it out like Dave drinking from him was the worst thing in the world, and yet now he was acting like it was an inconvenience at most. Sure, he’d seemed to warm up to the idea a little over time, but that hadn’t struck Dave as him coming to not mind it, more that as they grew closer, he was more willing to put up with it to keep Dave alive. Before that point, it had been a disgruntled resignation, where now it was now a necessary discomfort. Never had it stuck him that, given the option, John would let him continue.

“I don’t get you,” Dave said, crossing his arms and heaving a sigh. “I have no idea what goes on in that weird little head of your’s.”

John grinned like he’d been paid a shining compliment. “Well, are we doing this?” John shuffled around a bit, pushing at Dave, breaking down his resolve. “Just suck it up, you big baby. Both literally and physically.”

Dave wrinkled his nose. “Gross.” John ignored him, scooting right up the bed and leaning against the headboard.

“C’mon,” he said impatiently. Dave’s cheeks prickled and he hesitated again, pausing in the movement he’d made to follow.John arched a brow and patted his lap encouragingly. Dave was more than a little speechless.

“What the fuck?” he said, a laugh bubbling through. John turned quickly red.

“It was weird having you bite be from behind, I thought this would be less weird,” he said, words falling out in a desperate rush. “Don’t make fun of me. It’s awkward wherever you sit, at least this way I can see you a little.

With an amused flick of an ear, Dave rolled his eyes and slowly approached. With stiff restraint, he sat himself down on John’s knees, forcing himself not to look away in embarrassment when John laughed at his expression. “This is one of your worse ideas,” Dave said, voice clipped. It only made John chuckle. “Why are you so gung-ho about this, anyway?” Dave said defensively.

John shrugged, hands resting on Dave’s knees. “I guess I just had a sort of... revelation? I don’t know. We were driving back and I thought ‘vampire biology is kind of fucked up, who came up with that?’.” Dave snorted derisively. “Yeah, I know, but that made me think. ‘Well duh, no one came up with it, they can’t help it.’ And then I thought about how Nepeta said that the life force thing was something humans made all the time, and that drinking from an animal might kill it... I guess I just thought, ‘if I’m always making more blood and life energy or whatever, isn’t it kind of stupid to act all precious about it?’

“Like, I trust you not to kill me at this point, and it doesn’t feel real bad or anything, so why am I being so weird about it?”

“Because it’s gross and fucked up vampire biology?” Dave said.

“Yeah, but you can’t help that. You’ve always been doing your best to be moral when you were dealt a shitty amoral hand, and it felt kind of mean to hold you back from a perfectly acceptable solution that was right there, just because I thought it was kind of yucky and weird.”

“Yucky and weird might be an understatement,” Dave remarked.

“Lots of human stuff is yucky and weird but it’s just an everyday part of life. You having to drink blood is a part of your life, and it’s kind of just as fucked up to be all weird about it when I know you are just doing your best to stay alive and do as little harm as possible.” John paused and licked his lips, shrugging once more. “So I thought that I might take some pressure off and be an ethical meal source for you, you know?”

“I think you’re too used to vampire weirdness now,” Dave laughed, shaking his head. “Most people wouldn’t think that this is the equivalent of like, humans needing to fart. They’d think it’s unnatural and violent.”

“Then that’s their problem,” John proclaimed. 

Dave shook his head, sitting back on John’s legs. “I can’t exactly blame them,” he said. “Not many people are as seasoned as you are with getting bitten. Even if they are, it’s not usually... like this.”

Somehow unfazed, John shrugged and rubbed the back of his neck. “You sure talk a lot for someone who’s starving,” he said, a sly grin creeping onto his face.

“Fine,” Dave said, exasperated. “Just hold still, okay?”

With a mock salute, John leant back against the pillows, tilting his head to the side and exposing his neck. Trying his best not to think about it, Dave scooting forward and pressed his lips to his skin. He felt around for the pound of John’s pulse, feeling it rapidly rise as he pressed the flats of his fangs to his chosen spot. Though he allowed a moment or two for John to change his mind, the feeling of John’s heartbeat beneath his tongue was more than enough to push his remaining reservations aside as he sunk his teeth into John’s neck.

Beneath him, John shuddered, then stiffened, obviously trying to stay still. Hot blood welled into Dave’s mouth, blotting out almost everything else but the warmth and taste of John’s skin and the feeling of his blood on his lips. He could feel John’s fingers digging into his knees, feel the thundering of his pulse, but anything beyond that was unimportant. Nothing would ever make Dave enjoy feeding, but the rush of relief and energy feeding provided was next to none.

If he’d had less control, Dave could have drunk John dry. As it was, he felt he took too much, pulling back to quickly lave over the wound, stopping the flow of blood. He pulled himself back, feeling John slump a little.

“Hey,” Dave said urgently. “You okay?”

“Mm-hmm,” came the hummed reply, John absently reaching up to touch the side of his neck. His eyes were lidded and his face was flushed, but he looked more tired than uncomfortable.

“Are you sure?” Dave said, uncertain. “You look kind of flushed.” Dave reached out and pressed the cool skin of his hand to John’s cheek, feeling the burning heat beneath. He touched his forehead, less hot but still warm.

John laughed softly, grabbing Dave’s hand from his face and rolling his eyes. “You’re worrying too much. I’m fine, really.” He pressed Dave’s cold hand to his cheek again, snorting a puff of laughter. “That does feel good though,” he admits. “You’re always so cold. But soft.”

“And you’re always so warm,” Dave counters. John drops Dave’s hand and grins with a half-shrug and a drooping head.

Sliding from John’s lap, Dave struggled to contain the bubbling energy in his stomach. The energy— John’s energy —was racing through his veins and filling him with a feeling that he could do anything if he just put his mind to it. It felt almost wrong to feel like that when John was so drained beside him. He helped John lay down, hefting the blankets out from under his ass and tucking him in.

“You should drink something before you fall asleep,” Dave said, moving to the mini fridge, the pack of juice boxes they brought everywhere these days haphazardly thrown inside. He brings one over, prodding John’s lips with the straw until he got annoyed enough to drink it. “You’re such a baby.”

“I just feel tired, and relaxed. It’s kinda good.” John sucked up the last of the juice, sinking back into the pillows with a drained smile. Dave took the box from him and shook his head in disbelief. Before Dave could formulate a response, John was yawning and rolling over, half-asleep already. Dave took his glasses from his face and placed them on the nightstand. He sat on the edge of the bed and stretched. He felt like he could run a marathon and still have extra energy. He didn’t want to sit and watch John sleep, but he didn’t want to leave either. With Texas so close on the horizon, leaving John alone in a motel room in this state felt dangerous. It wasn’t that he was worried about the Strider clan— they weren’t close enough for that to be reasonable —but more that there was a general feeling of unease surrounding him.

For a while, all he could do was pace. Pace, and think about what they were going to do. John may have had all his fancy weapons and potions, but when it came down to it, Dave knew that John’s frail body wouldn’t stand a chance. Their only option was for Dave to fight and keep John safe long enough to stab Bro through the heart with a stake, or to set him on fire. Those were the only real ways Dave knew how to kill a vampire. Unless John had some secret vampire knowledge he hadn’t told Dave, those were the only options.

The only problem was that Dave didn’t know if he could do it. He wasn’t the strongest vampire in the world, not even close. He wouldn’t even be the strongest vampire in the room. He was maybe faster than his peers, but that wouldn’t help when they surrounded him. It wasn’t just that, though. Dave was terrified. All he had to do was think of Bro’s silhouette or the glint of his smile and he felt his insides turn to water.

It was an awful situation. Dave was John’s only hope of survival, but that hope was the hope that Dave wouldn’t turn into a terrified, useless mess.

Dave recalled those ‘training sessions’. Older vampires jumping out of doorways or from around corners and slamming Dave against walls. They hadn’t gone easy on him then and there would be absolutely no reason for them to go easy on Dave now. They would kill him without a second thought if he let them.

Dave sat heavily in an armchair, putting his head in his hands. Hours had passed, and he’d spent the entire time with only this one problem circling in his mind. How was he going to protect John? How was he going to defeat Bro? Or even just a single other vampire in the den?

Dave pressed his fingers into the corners of his eyes, bright spots bursting in his vision. He’s stubbornly pushed it from his mind before but now, it couldn’t be ignored. If he and John didn’t come up with some sort of plan, how the hell were they going to make it out of this alive?

It was well past midnight when Dave stood up again and shook himself up. He wasn’t full of as much restless energy as he was before, but he hadn’t managed to work it off effectively either. His stomach was flipping and his chest was tight with the need to do something, to be productive in some way. To solve a problem to make this uselessness shrink.

The truck keys heavy in his pocket, Dave retrieved what he needed from the cab. Back inside, Dave pulled out John’s toolbox. He was still fast asleep, Dave moving as lightly as he could so as not to disturb him. To keep the mess and noise down, Dave planted himself on the small concrete patio out the back of the room.

He pulled one of the large branches of white pine from the truck into his lap. They were long and straight pieces of wood that John would cut sections off of and whittle down for stakes. He had four in total, which was more than enough for what Dave needed. It wasn’t too heavy, and when Dave tested it, it had good strength and slight elasticity to it, making it surprisingly good material for what he wanted to make.

He was going to make a sword. Or, more accurately, a long stake Dave could use as a sword.

He pulled out one of the longer, thicker knives and with carefully applied strength, began to work. He made it as thin as he could down the middle without compromising the blade’s strength, securing separate thinner pieces together for the bulk of the blade to hopefully minimise the chance of it outright snapping as soon as he hit something. He wrapped lengths of leather around the base, the thickest point, and sharpened the tip to a point, though not to the sharpest point it could be, as he’d seen John do. Again, to minimise snapping.

Feeling guilty but surprisingly good about what he was doing, Dave glanced around to make sure no one was out on their own patios before, as carefully as possible, ripping the metal vent cover off the side of the building. With a few careful stomps and a bit of bending, he fashioned himself a guard. The flattened slats of the vent helped it bend easily, overlapping to create something solid. With some wood glue, he secured strips of padding from the patio chair to the inside to make it more comfortable.

With another branch, he crafted himself a pistol grip. It took some tinkering to get where it joint to the blade to the right amount of flexibility, but with the use of screws and springs and more stolen metal, he was able to make something fairly close to a real grip. It wasn’t as comfortable or polished as a real grip, but the fact that he’d made it with his own hands was satisfying in its own right.

Sitting back, Dave admired his handiwork. It was a rough blade that touched the ground when he held it loosely at his side. Much thicker than a fencing blade, but still feeling just as light with Dave’s vampire strength. It represented a kendo sword more than a épée, with probably slightly less flex than one. It was completely different than what he was used to, but Dave was sure that he could make it work.

Stepping away from the building slightly, he weighed the blade in his hand, grinning an almost manic smile. This was it. This was how he was going to have an advantage over his peers. He wasn’t going to fight like a vampire, or even a hunter. He was going to fight like Dave.

As he swung the blade through the air a few times, admiring his work, excitement bubbling in his chest, Dave heard movement behind him.

“Dave?” Dave turned, watching John glance around, squinting blearily. “What’s going on?” he asked, running a hand through his hair.

“John,” Dave breathed, skipping forward. “I know how we’re going to kill Bro, that’s what’s going on,” he said excitably.

John’s eyes widened, dropping down to the sword Dave was clutching. “What is...?” A flicker of hesitant recognition. “Is that white pine?” Dave nodded excitedly. “May I?” John asked, reaching out. Dave handed it over eagerly. He watched as John turned it over in his hands, examining the grip, the guard, the blade. “You made this?” he asked, glancing at Dave again. He nodded. “It’s... actually not the worst craftsmanship I’ve ever seen.”

“I can keep them back like this,” Dave said, following after John as he went back inside, still looking over the blade. He sat on the bed, the sword over his knees as Dave talked. “Maybe even stab one or two, stop them from attacking. Vampires are mele fighters, you know? Hands and teeth and all that. If I can attack while keeping a distance—“

“—You have an advantage,” John finished, looking up at him. Dave nodded fervently. John let out a disbelieving laugh. “That’s a pretty good idea, actually.” He looked back down at the sword. “I think I can make a few adjustments to this. Can I...?”

Dave sat down next to him, clutching at his arm. “Yes,” he said in a rush. “There’s still heaps of pine, if I have more than one even, in case one breaks,” Dave babbles, a stream of excited thought pouring out of him. Even John seemed to get caught up in it.

“We should go to a hardware store,” he said, starting to sound just as excited. “Get a flexible core to put the wood around— We could make some armour!” They grip at each other in excitement, a laugh bubbling out of Dave.

Dave grabs the sword and stands, flicking the sword through the air, testing its strength. It didn’t slice through the air nearly as cleanly as his épée would have, but it was solid and weighty and packed a punch. “We might actually do this,” he breathed, looking at John, their grins mirrors of each other.

John surged up from the bed and swept Dave into a hug that Dave automatically returned. They clutched each other and laughed, John practically lifting Dave up with the strength of it.

“We might actually win,” John says in his ear. He pulled back, his face shining with hope like Dave had never seen it.

Propelled forward by some magnetic force, Dave dropped the sword and grabbed John’s face with both hands, dragging him down, and kissed him.

The moment hung in the air, frozen.

Then John’s hands scrabbled at Dave’s back, kissing him back with just as much force. It moved from joyous to desperate, John gripping him tightly, a hand pressed to his shoulder blades, the other tangled in his shirt at his hip.

It broke almost as suddenly as it began, both of them seeming to become aware of themselves at the same time. John doesn’t let him go, or push him away, or make a face. He just stares, glassy-eyed, both of them breathing hard.

“Last night,” Dave said, his voice surprisingly hoarse. He licked his lips, his hands pressed on either side of John’s neck. “You wanted me to bite your neck.”

John’s pupils blew out instantly, despite the brightness of the late morning sun. He took a step back, falling to sit on the bed, dragging Dave with him. Dave landed, with as much grace as he could muster in such an entanglement of limbs, in John’s lap again.

“You liked it, didn’t you?” Dave said slyly. John’s blinding grin appeared again, tinged with only the barest hint of sheepishness.

“Way too much,” he admits, circling his arms around Dave’s waist and hugging him close.

Dave did the same, wrapping his arms around John’s shoulders and resting his head in the crook of his neck. “Kinky bastard.” Both of them seem lost in their own thoughts for a while, just hugging each other close, like Dave realised he’d been wanting to do for a while. “How long?”

“Have I had a weird biting fetish?”

“No,” Dave snorts. “How long have you wanted to kiss me?”

“Since Salt Lake City,” John answers immediately. “That’s how long I’ve known, anyway.” He pulled back only enough for them to look at each other again. “When you said your first kiss was terrible, I had this impulse to kiss you. I probably felt like that for longer, but that was when I knew it was something I wanted.”

Dave smiled ruefully. “That’s probably the first time I’ve heard you so sure of your feelings, you know,” he laughed.

“It was hard to miss,” John said back, rolling his eyes.

They lapse into momentary silence. Dave bites his lip, brows twitching into a frown. “Is this...” he started. “Just... Attraction?” He hesitated. “Because I like you John. I think I like you a lot. I don’t want to do this if—“

“I like you too,” John says quickly. “I don’t just think you’re hot, though I do think that. I like the things you think about and the things you say. I— I like you too.”

Dave’s stomach flips more than it had during the kiss, filling him with a light-headed feeling. Happy sparks burst in his chest, his feelings returned, feeling drunk on it all. “I’d very much like to kiss you again,” Dave says, his head spinning.

John laughs. “I’d like that too,” he replies, curling a hand around Dave’s neck and bringing him gently down.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> only 5 more chapters to go!


	16. Exaltation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John gets something new.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> heads up!  
this chapter contains explicit sexual material. if you wish to skip this content, jump from the first “º” to the second one. you won’t miss out on anything plot-related by skipping! alternatively, the entire chapter is skippable if you’d prefer to not see anything nsfw at all.  
side note — dave’s junk will be referred to as his dick in this fic
> 
> additional smut tags:
> 
> Vaginal sex  
Vaginal fingering  
Hand jobs  
Bareback sex (Dave can’t get pregnant/an STI so a condom isn’t needed)  
(implied) Praise kink  
Multiple orgasms  
(brief) Finger sucking  
Cowboy  
Mentions of Dave being a cumbucket/cumdump in case anyone doesn’t like those words  
Coming inside  
A little bit of bottoming from the top
> 
> Overall its pretty vanilla, but if you don’t want to see any of these things, feel free to skip

The kiss was soft and sweet and made John’s stomach turn to warm goo. They grin into it, laughing like a couple of school children.

“John,” Dave breathed, hands coming up, cupping John’s face and stroking his flushed cheeks. “As much as I’d like to keep kissing you,” he said quietly, pressing their foreheads together. “You have killer morning breath, and I need a shower desperately.”

John snorted in surprise, leaning back and groaning. “Dude,” he complained.

“There’s time to kiss all day,” Dave said with a grin. He swung a leg from John’s lap, standing up in a graceful motion that John admired. He dipped down, dropping a kiss to John’s forehead. “Wouldn’t you rather make-out with a clean vampire?”

“We still haven’t gotten you new clothes, though,” John pointed out. “Isn’t it kind of pointless if you’re just going to put the same clothes on?”

Dave waved a dismissive hand. “I’ll wear something of your’s, and then we can go shopping.” He paused at John’s duffle, digging around his clothes. John leant back on his hands, heaving a sigh. “Besides, we can stop by the pharmacy and get some lube,” Dave throws over his shoulder, disappearing into the bathroom.

Though John was frustrated, he couldn’t really argue. Neither of them had exactly been prepared to be all up in each other’s business so early in the morning and thus hadn’t bathed or changed since last night. Nonetheless, John opted to flop back on the bed and laugh through a sigh, waiting for his thoughts to catch up with all that had just happened. After a moment the echoing rush of the shower running filled the room, prompting John to roll over and perch on the side of the bed.

“Can I come in?” he yelled over the rush of water, crouching in front of his duffle to pull out the plastic bag containing his bathroom supplies.

“Yep,” came Dave’s easy reply.

John pushed into the bathroom, the warm steam washing over him. “Jeez, how hot do you make it?” John laughed, the sound bouncing and surrounding him.

“Undead, remember?” Dave said back. The shower curtain shifted, and John glanced over.

Dave didn’t seem to care that he was naked, his usually fluffy hair plastered thickly to his head, his skin flushed from the heat of the water and his pointed ears poking out more prominently without his curls to hide them. “Soap?” he asked, and John jerked and tore his gaze away from where it had been drifting. Dave grinned smugly and took the soap from him, drawing the curtain back again.

“Show off!” John spluttered back when Dave’s gaze wasn’t there to unnerve him.

After that, John tried his best to focus on brushing his teeth and shaving the dusting of stubble from his jawline. He even flossed, waiting for his turn in the shower.

“How long do you need, dude?” John laughed, lightly knocking on the wall next to the shower.

“Why?” Dave asked, poking his head— and thankfully, only his head —out from around the curtain. “Do you want to join me?” he said mischievously.

“Not with boiling hot water, I don’t,” John complained.

“Too bad,” Dave laughed, twisting the taps and pulling back the curtain completely. John threw Dave a towel, raising an eyebrow. He wrapped the offered towel around his waist and stepped out, shaking water out of his ears. “C’mere,” he said with a grin. As soon as John was in range, Dave tilted his head up and pressed a kiss to John’s lips. “Minty,” he commented, licking his lips and drawing away. John’s eyes followed him, stopping himself from dragging Dave back and stealing another few kisses.

Dave moved to the basin where he’d left a selection of John’s clothes and began to dry off while John prepared for his own shower. When he glanced over at Dave again before hopping into the shower, he was wearing boxers and one of John’s t-shirts. It wasn’t as comically oversized as maybe John had hoped, but it still hung off his shoulders loosely and his body’s shape under the cloth. Unaware of John’s staring, Dave was dragging a hand down the front of the faded shirt, looking almost bashful. As fun as it would’ve been to tease him for it, John knew he was sporting a similar look, seeing Dave in his clothes.

When John left the bathroom sometime later, Dave was reclined back on the bed in wearing a pair of John’s sweats tied tightly at the waist, the legs still falling past his ankles.

When he noticed John return, still towelling off his hair, he looked up from his comic and smiled sweetly. John’s heart skipped a beat. He hoped Dave couldn’t hear it.

John took a step forward and almost tripped. When he looked down, he suddenly remembered what had triggered that first kiss. The sword lay on the ground, John carefully picking it up and inspecting it for damage. He could hear Dave shifting, walking over to him.

“Do you really think it’ll work?” he asked, a hand sliding up John’s arm, his gaze hot on the side of his face.

As much as John wanted to say it would, he didn’t know. He’d never successfully killed a vampire before. The most he’d managed was chasing a few out of town for some locals who couldn’t defend themselves. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “But I hope it will.”

He wound his free arm around Dave’s shoulders, pulling him close. A cold hand came up and trailed down his cheek, turning his face away from the sword.

“It’s not important right now,” Dave says.

“Then what is?” John murmured, leaning down to brush his lips to Dave’s.

“Making up for lost time,” he replies, pressing up into the kiss. “I just want to be close to you.”

º

The pair of them fell back on the bed, John dragging Dave close and kissing him hard. Affection and hope and lust swirled in his chest, accelerated by his hammering pulse. It was all so contrary from what he’d ever expected. Dave was cool and soft and alive, so separated from that vision of the hard and dead vampires he’d been taught about.

Dave tangled their fingers together and carded a hand through John’s tangled hair while John ran his free hand up Dave’s back, keeping him close.

Their lips slotted together; Dave’s fangs scraped at John’s lips and John’s own teeth did the same. His fingers curled against skin, feeling every bump and groove with exaltation.

Warmth was rapidly sinking low in his belly, his hand brushing against tantalising skin as Dave’s shirt rode further and further up. The kiss broke, but only for Dave to trail a line of cold kisses down John’s jaw and to the column of his neck, his entire body twitching in response. His mind was thrown back to the night before, to the hotness that had gathered between his hips, much like it did now, to the embarrassment of hoping Dave didn’t notice the breathy noise he’d let out. Only his exhaustion had stopped him from getting as hot and bothered as he did now when Dave purposefully dragged his teeth over the sensitive skin there.

“Dick,” John laughed, swallowing thickly.

“What?” Dave replied, grabbing John’s hands by the wrist and pressing them into the bed. When he spoke, his breath was hot against his throat, and John was reminded that it was his life force that kept it that way— his blood that let Dave look so flushed and heady.

“You know what you’re doing,” John groaned, turning his head to look at Dave, who pulled back and grinned, fangs and all.

“Well, do you want me to stop?” he asked, loosening his grip on John’s wrists and trailing his fingers down his inner arms, still loosely holding him.

John twisted his hands around to grab Dave’s wrists instead, the movement sparking a glint of amusement in Dave’s eyes. They both knew that any exertion of strength was entirely resting on Dave letting him do it— if he wanted to, he could break away from John at any time. Rather than being a mood-killer, something about the possibility of Dave wanting to be held down made the idea more enticing.

John pushed himself up, still gripping Dave’s wrists, dipping down for another kiss. Dave’s mouth fell open for him and John could feel the way his breath picked up, the movements heaving against his chest. Sitting up again planted Dave squarely back in John’s lap, and there was no hiding the hardness that was growing there.

“Do you want me to stop?” John throws back, sucking on Dave’s lip and feeling it swell to life.

“No,” Dave breathes, twitching in his lap.

“Can I fuck you then?”

“Yes,” Dave laughed, head tilting back slightly. “In fact, I’ll probably be disappointed if you don’t,” he added.

John grins widely and releases Dave’s wrists, shifting his hands to his waist. As if reading his mind, Dave reached down and grabbed the hem of his t-shirt, pulling it up over his head.

With eager touches, John dragged his hands up Dave’s sides, pressing into the dip in his spine, tracing the criss-cross of scars. He sweeps a thumb under one pec, glancing up at Dave’s face. It was flushed— flushed with John’s blood —and his freckled skin stood out against it. His eyes were lidded and his mouth was parted, pulled into a half-grin. He grabbed John’s hand and dragged it up, John pressing the pad of his fingers over his nipple, grinning at the sigh he gets in response.

It was easy to tease the nipple to hardness, rolling it between his fingers, or brushing over it with his thumb, switching to the other side just to see him shudder. Dave held to John’s shoulders to support himself, the prickling of his nails on his skin not all unpleasant.

Whether because of desperation or frustration, Dave doesn’t take long to start rocking his hips, small movements that ground them together and made John’s hands stutter significantly.

He can’t help the moan he lets out, his eyes squeezing shut. He hadn’t done anything like this in years, and the mere act of Dave moving over his hard-on this way was better than his hand had ever felt, even with the layers of clothing between them.

“Dave,” he says, grabbing Dave’s hips tightly. He opens his eyes, focused again, and stares up into Dave’s face, watching the way his face softened as they moved together. He looked so pleased with himself, like the cat that got the cream, and John is struck with the sudden urge to leave him dishevelled and desperate. “I’m going to fuck you so hard,” he breathes, Dave’s laugh in response sounding far too light to be coming from the man rutting down on his lap.

“Fuck yeah,” Dave breathes, his fingers digging harder into John’s shoulders, dragging forwards to scape down John’s chest, yanking his shirt up until John complied and flung it off.

Dave’s hand presses into the centre of John’s chest and he goes down easily. By the time he had gathered his bearings, Dave was already plucking open the button of his jeans, pulling down both them and his boxers enough to expose his cock to the cool air, then down and past his knees. He let out a hiss of surprise before Dave’s warmth protected him from the cold again. Absently, John kicked his pants off the rest of the way, admiring the view of Dave, half naked, flushed and bent over him, desperate.

This time, when Dave starts moving, the thinner barrier between them leaves him almost dizzy with stimulation, his hands gripping at Dave’s thighs.

“Dude,” Dave says. Just as suddenly as he’d started, Dave pauses his movements again, pulling John slightly out of his daze. “I’m wet,” he says, obviously excited. John could only moan in response, his fingers tugging hard on Dave’s thighs. “No,” Dave said lightly. “You don’t get it. I didn’t know if I could get wet after the whole vampire thing,” he said, obviously breathless. He pushed up onto his knees and swung off John, making him moan again in complaint.

“Be patient,” Dave said with a snort of amusement, pushing at John to keep him down. When he slid back into John’s lap, it was immediately apparent that he’d shed his sweats. “Check it,” Dave moaned, and his wetness kissed at John’s dick, even through the boxers.

“Oh my God,” John moaned, Dave’s words only serving to drive him up the wall. While he was obviously happy about this revelation, John could barely think of anything other than the fact that he was about to cream himself right there and then with the knowledge that he’d gotten Dave so turned on. “I wanna see,” he finally managed. His hands went for the waistband of Dave’s boxers, starting to tug on them with the intent of getting Dave just an undressed as he was. Dave’s boxers were the only item of clothing left between them.

Dave sits up again, tugging his boxers down around his thighs. John doesn’t bother to wait for him to get them off any further, pulling at him and coaxing him back down into his lap.

The instant he’s seated again, John’s hips buck up against him and Dave moans sharply. John held tight to Dave’s thighs, pushing them open as wide as they would go. Something about being able to physically manipulate Dave into a position that he liked made him hot with desire.

“Shit,” Dave groaned, hands either side of John’s face. “Eager, much?” he laughed between pants.

John grinned wolfishly. “I’m going to fuck you so hard you’ll still feel it tonight,” he said, grabbing Dave’s ass. “I don’t have a condom— is that okay?”

“Can’t get pregnant or sick,” Dave replied. “Stop talking yourself up and fuck me already, dude.” Obviously impatient, Dave sat up, pressing a hand against John’s pelvis, shifting back slightly. Then Dave was touching him— honest to God jerking him off, his hand squeezing just right. His cool hand pumped over him a few times, thumb swiping over his slit, each movement making him rock up into Dave’s hand.

John bit his lip, unable to muffle himself as those cool, calloused, and surprisingly dexterous hands stroked him.

When Dave stopped, he whined, only to witness Dave kicking away his boxers, leaving him naked as the day he was born. He caught glimpses of flushed wetness between his legs, hidden in a nest of curls, before Dave was on him again, rubbing against his cock like there was nowhere else he wanted to be.

John instinctually grabbed his hips. His next instinct was to lift Dave up and guide him down, pushing into that searing heat he could feel— but he hesitated. “Do—do you need any stretching out?” John panted. He didn’t want to toot his own horn, but he was acutely aware of how small Dave could look beside him, and even superhuman strength couldn’t do anything about the stretch of stuffing something inside him might cause.

Dave laughed again above him, cocking his head, a smug smile on his face. “I thought you wanted me to be sore afterwards?”

“Not hurt!” John protested. Dave sat up a little, continuing to rock on John’s dick until John stopped him with a squeeze of his hips.

“If you’re offering to finger me, then hell yeah,” Dave said. “But you look like you’re about to nut if we wait much longer. I’ll be fine if you’re careful.”

“I want to be careful _and_ finger you. I can do both,” John retorted, pushing Dave’s thighs further apart now that they weren’t restricted by boxers. He slid his hands up his inner thighs, watching Dave’s face first before flicking down to get his first good look between Dave’s legs. He hummed hungrily, mind already racing forward to imagine himself burying his face there and letting Dave get his pleasure that way. But Dave was right, and he didn’t want to wait much longer, so he slides a hand up, the other keeping Dave’s thighs steady and spread.

HIs finger slid easily over his folds, the wetness only more apparent now, his body hot in a way the rest of him never was. Two fingers pushed easily inside, Dave choking on a breath above him, hips twitching.

“John—“ he started, cut off when his thumb pressed up against Dave’s dick, his entrance clutching around John’s fingers in response. “Oh fuck,” he sighed, a hand curling back in John’s hair.

A third finger pressed in easily, and John could see why Dave hadn’t been too concerned. “You weren’t kidding when you said it was fine, were you?” he laughed, thumb grinding harder over Dave’s dick. A hand came down, keeping John’s fingers pressed hard between his legs as Dave ground against him, John pumping into him.

“Fuck, you’re doin’ good, so good,” Dave was breathing above him, drawing out his vowels and clipping the ends of words.

Glancing up at him, John can’t help but smile at the way he looked, dancing between tensed up and so utterly blissed out that John practically feels like he’s the one being jerked off. “I could get you off like this,” John mutters, more to himself than to Dave, but he gains a wanton moan in response regardless.

“Please,” Dave whines, clenching around him. John’s fingers crooked inside him, stroking along his walls. He barely remembered the last time he’d had sex, but he knows that this is better. Dave is better, squirming and whining above him, so responsive to every little move he makes.

“Do you want me to get you off like this, or do you want to see how good you look riding me?” John said, smug with how easy it had been to rile Dave up.

“Fuck me,” Dave says, the words tumbling out. “John, shit— you can do both next time, but I want you now.”

John wastes no time pulling his fingers out, pressing them up against Dave’s lips while he drags him forward again. Dave obediently took the fingers into his mouth, lifting his hips so John could line himself up, sitting up to get a better angle on him.

His cock slid against his entrance a few times until he pulled his hand away from Dave’s mouth and used it to spread apart his lips instead, pushing the blunt head of his cock against him. Before he could ask if Dave was sure, Dave was sinking himself down with a choked off moan, John echoing the noise, looking up at him in wonder.

“C’mon,” Dave groaned, reaching up and cupping John’s face. “Fuck me, John.”

“Don’t need to tell me twice,” he replied leaning in and pressing his face into Dave’s hair. He adjusted his grip on his hips, easily raising him up and bringing back down, his own hips thrusting up to meet him halfway. Immediately, he’s struck by how tight it is, even after a finger fucking, and how warm it was. He doesn’t pull Dave up right away, letting Dave adjust for a moment. He rocked his hips, sitting on John’s cock, making needy noises. John would’ve been happy to sit there, let Dave get himself off like that, but he wanted to move, wanted to fuck him as requested. He lifts Dave up again, pulling him back down, hard. They moan together, Dave’s chin propped up on John’s shoulder, his arms gripping John’s biceps as they began to move in time.

John pumped eagerly into him, using his grip to pull Dave down harder and faster. It was hot and wet and more desperate than he’d expected, Dave moaning a string of encouragements and expletives into his ear. He was clenching down on every thrust and letting out the sweetest, neediest noises of desire. John felt as though he was about to light on fire, as warm as he was. He already felt right on the edge of orgasm.

“You feel so good,” John choked out, his hands sliding down to Dave’s thighs, still able to lift him and pounded up into him with a level of ease that surprised him. He felt so close, so desperately close.

“John,” Dave breathes, his voice jumping up an octave. “Fuck. _John_!” He’s panting out John’s name now, voice hitching and stuttering and letting out a rainbow of sounds John could listen to for days on end. He clenches down on him during another thrust, trembling in his arms and moaning his name into his ear, and John is spent embarrassingly quick. He thrusts up with a few quick, sharp movements of his hips that keep him buried deep, his cum spilling into Dave.

He’d be apologetic later, when Dave inevitably realised that being the cumdump meant being messy and gross, but for the moment he shudders and groans, pulling Dave tight against his chest.

As the stars clear from his eyes, he can feel Dave twitching in his lap, grinding down against him and making pitiful noises.

“Fuck,” Dave chokes out. “I need—“

“Keep going,” John groans, still half-hard despite everything. He feels Dave’s hand press between them as they pick the pace back up again, his fingers working over his dick. He pulls back to watch, jerking his hips up in sporadic thrusts, trying to push Dave over the edge.

”Fuck, look at you,” he grunts, a spike of arousal shooting down his spine at the sight of Dave’s hand moving over himself, his dick pressing his seed into him with each movement. Dave makes a hiccuping sound above him as John pushes his thighs open again, his thumbs pressing closer to spread him and allow John to get a better view.

“John, fuck, I’m going to—“

“You can finish Dave, I’m right here, you can cum,” John coos, still hopelessly sensitive and aroused. “I’ll take care of you.” He hopes Dave believes it— hopes he knows its a promise for more than when they’re naked and horny.

The words had barely left his mouth when Dave sucks in a sharp breath and goes still, clenching hard on John’s cock and shuddering.

Oh. So that’s what got him off. He focuses on coaxing Dave through his orgasm, kissing up his neck and whispering affectionate words of praise. When Dave was finally spent, John carefully pulled out of Dave, licking his lips and staring at him, wide-eyed.

“_Oh_,” Dave gasps out, going slack, head tipped back and chest heaving.

John laughed breathlessly in agreement, pushing sweaty hair out of his eyes. He lowered Dave onto the bed and hovered over him, pressing a kiss to his forehead.

“Dave,” he said, voice breaking. “I’m still—“

“Do it,” Dave said, voice soft and warm like melted chocolate. “Can’t get messier than I already am.”

It only took a few jerks before John was cumming again, spilling over onto Dave’s stomach with a gasp.

Finally out of juice, John collapsed beside him with a disbelieving laugh.

Beside him, Dave stretched out and groaned. “Shit, that was good.”

“You said it,” John agreed, rolling over and throwing an arm over Dave, pulling him back tight against his chest.

“I’d love to cuddle,” Dave laughed. “But your cum is kinda dripping out of me, and it’s not as hot as it sounds.”

“No, it’s way hotter than it sounds.”

“I need a shower, John,” Dave complained.

“Are we going to need to shower every time before and after we have sex?”

“Only if you keep using me as your personal cumbucket,” Dave grumbled, though he pulled John’s arm tighter around him, barely attempting to make a real argument.

“So, yes?” John responded, huffing a laugh into Dave’s neck, kissing up it affectionately.

Dave laughed, reaching behind him to rake his nails through John’s hair. “Maybe just after, then.”

º

The room was dark and warm, John well on his way to falling asleep. After the sex, and later, the feeding, he barely had enough energy left to keep his eyes open, let alone talk.

“John?”

“Hmm?”

They’d ended up having another shower, if only to save the motel sheets from being irreversibly stained by the evidence of their coupling.

In the bright light of the bathroom, John had trailed his fingers over the scars on Dave’s chests, T-shaped thin pale lines that evoked a fluttering feeling, now that he knew what they meant. The other scars were heart-wrenching in a different way.

So John focused on those chest scars, and they didn’t talk about what came next.

“We still need to go shopping,” Dave whispered in the dark.

John shifted, rubbing sleep out of his eyes and peering down at Dave. His face was pressed to John’s chest, his cool fingers tracing reverent patterns onto the skin of his stomach. “Shopping?”

“Unless you want to keep sharing a wardrobe,” Dave laughed, tilting his head up to meet John’s gaze.

“You looked pretty good in my clothes, I will say,” John retorted.

Dave gave a lazy grin, tilting his head. “Maybe, but I’d like to be able to go out without your pants dropping off my hips.”

John hummed in sleepy agreement. “No one else is allowed to see you with your pants down,” he slurred. He pulled Dave tighter, exhaustion dragging his eyes closed. He felt as if he were sinking into the mattress, Dave’s voice the only anchor to the living world. As much as he enjoyed talking to Dave, he was really keen to go to bed. “Now, shh,” John mumbled, pressing a kiss to Dave’s forehead. “I’ll buy whatever you want— later, though.”

John curled tighter around him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i hate reading my own smut so if there’s any mistakes or weirdness, that’s why  
we’re on the home stretch now !


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